THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 

Eastern  Star  Home 


C^  Z-^Lc^i. — 


ry  JifiW  J^v"^- 

(/ft,* 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 


Etbtng  for  tlje  Jfuture 

A  STUDY  IN  THE  ETHICS  OF 
IMMORTALITY 


BY 

JOHN  ROTHWELL  SLATER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF   ENGLISH    IN  THE   UNIVERSITY 
OF    ROCHESTER 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

c£be  fiitocnji&e  press  CambriDge 
1916 


COPYRIGHT,   1916,  BY  JOHM  ROTHWELL  SLATER 
ALL    RIGHTS    RKSERVKD 

Published  October  iQttt 


DEDICATED  TO  A  GREAT  TEACHER 

Who  loved  the  past,  labored  for  the  present,  and 
lived  for  the  future : 

WILLIAM  RAINEY   HARPER 
1856-1906 

"  Our  low  life  was  the  level's  and  the  night's, 
He's  for  the  morning." 

"  Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer." 


AVE    MAGISTER 
SALVE    IMMORTALIS 

BENE    SIT    TIBI 
VALE   UBICUMOJJE    LABORAS 

TIBI   POST    DECEM    ANNOS 

INVISO   INAUDITO   HAUD   INCOGNITO 

DISCIPULI    CONCLAMANTES    GRATULAMUR 


867050 


LIVING   FOR  THE   FUTURE 


THE  JOURNEY 

As  we  rush,  as  ive  rush  in  the  train, 

The  trees  and  the  houses  go  TV  heeling  back, 

But  the  starry  heavens  above  the  plain 
Come  flying  on  our  track. 

All  the  beautiful  stars  of  the  sky, 

The  silver  doves  of  the  forest  of  Night, 

Over  the  dull  earth  swarm  and  Jly, 
Companions  of  our  flight. 

We  will  rush  ever  on  without  fear; 

Let  the  goal  be  far,  the  flight  be  fleet  I 
For  we  carry  the  Heavens  with  us,  dear, 
While  the  Earth  slips  from  our  feet  I 

JAMES  THOMSON 
(From  Sunday  at  Hampstead} 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 


WITHIN  a  few  years  all  of  us  will  be 
thinking  without  brains,  feeling  with- 
out nerves,  seeing  and  hearing  without 
eyes  or  ears.  Lacking  hands  and  pock- 
ets, we  can  carry  nothing  with  us,  not 
even  credentials  of  good  character.  All 
that  we  shall  have  will  be  what  we 
are.  Stripped  of  all  possessions,  tradi- 
tions, and  apologies,  we  shall,  so  it 
seems  now,  find  ourselves  somewhat 
at  a  loss  to  explain  ourselves  to  the 
universe. 

Yet  somehow,  somewhere,  we  shall 
be  very  much  alive,  more  alive  than 
we  can  now  imagine.  Let  us  not  al- 
i 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

ways  speak  about  our  souls  when  we 
contemplate  the  future.  Your  soul  is 
yourself,  more  or  less  imperfectly  pos- 
sessed of  a  body  which  is  sure  to  elude 
you  in  the  end.  Some  little  fiber  snaps, 
some  cell  or  bit  of  tissue  protests  five 
minutes  too  long  against  its  ancient 
enemies,  and  suddenly  a  curious  bit  of 
machinery  is  stopped  forever.  In  the 
temple  of  life  there  hangs  a  precious 
lamp,  carefully  tended  for  these  many 
years  by  the  unseen  ministers  of  being; 
but  now  its  silver  cord  is  loosed,  its 
golden  bowl  is  broken.  In  the  last 
brief  flare  of  that  fallen  lamp  you  see 
your  last  of  darkness.  Those  about  you 
had  been  shaking  their  heads  at  one 
another,  but  now  their  heads  all  nod 
together.  You  wonder  what  they  have 
found  to  agree  upon  after  all  this  dis- 
2 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

sent.  Somebody  says,  "He's  gone"; 
but  instead  of  that,  they  are  suddenly 
gone,  and  you  find  yourself  alone. 

"Very  well,"  you  say  to  yourself, 
"  those  nerves  and  arteries  were  n't  of 
much  use  to  me  anyway  for  the  last 
five  years.  Most  of  what  I  really  ac- 
complished had  to  be  done  in  spite  of 
them,  for  they  were  always  quarreling. 
Now  for  a  free  life  at  last.  Good-bye, 
dust  and  ashes.  Your  feeble  spark 's 
gone  out.  I  thought  it  was  night  when 
I  turned  away  from  your  cold  hearth, 
but  when  I  open  the  door  I  find  myself 
outdoors  in  the  sun.  Come,  let's  be 
off." 

Now  there  are  many  ways  of  look- 
ing at  this  inevitable  prospect.  There 
is  the  fatalistic  way  —  as  Edgar  says, 
in  King  Lear,  — 

3 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

**  Men  must  endure 

Their  going  hence,  even  as  their  coming  hither ; 
Ripeness  is  all." 

There  is  the  way  of  curious  and 
somber  speculation,  the  anatomy  of 
melancholy,  Hamlet's  way:  — 

**  What  dreams  may  come 
When  we  have  shuffled  off  this  mortal  coil 
Must  give  us  pause." 

There  is  the  way  of  studied  and 
forced  indifference,  the  way  of  those 
who  say,  "  One  life  at  a  time."  Walter 
Savage  Landor,  on  his  seventy-fifth 
birthday,  wrote  these  proudly  pagan 
lines:  — 

"I  strove  with  none,  for  none  was  worth  my 

strife. 

Nature  I  loved,  and  next  to  Nature,  Art. 
I  warmed  my  hands  before  the  fire  of  life ; 
It  sinks,  and  I  am  ready  to  depart." 

4 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

This  attitude,  which  seeks  to  be  stoi- 
cal, grows  morbid  by  and  by.  There 
is  an  age  when  old  friends  begin  to 
drop  off  faster  than  new  ones  come. 
"All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar 
faces."  Then  comes  the  time  when  you 
go  round  the  house  at  twilight,  locking 
up  unused  rooms  until  you  are  fairly 
burdened  with  the  keys,  and  are  tempted 
to  throw  them  away. 

There  is  the  way  of  religious  exalta- 
tion, the  way  of  martyr  and  saint  and 
apostle  —  "  to  be  absent  from  the  body, 
and  to  be  present  with  the  Lord."  While 
for  the  Christian  it  ought  to  be  true 
that  "  to  die  is  gain,"  the  general  senti- 
ment of  the  Christian  world  at  the 
present  time  is  not  altogether  in  keep- 
ing with  scriptural  teaching  at  this 
point.  If  Christians  really  believe  that 
5 


I  LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

death  is  only  an  incident  in  eternal  life, 
separating  the  visible  world  from  an 
invisible  world  of  equal  reality  and  su- 
perior opportunity,  they  have  a  strange 
way  of  showing  it.  Mourning  is  just  as 
black,  sorrow  is  often  just  as  blind, 
among  Christians  as  among  those  who 
profess  no  such  comfortable  faith.  But 
the  fact  remains  that,  except  when  the 
sharpness  of  personal  grief  prevents, 
the  Christian  way  of  looking  at  man's 
mortality  is  a  hopeful  way.  At  Easter 
we  celebrate,  not  the  Pauline  doctrine 
of  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  which 
is  incomprehensible  to  many  in  this 
age,  but  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  which  has 
quietly  taken  its  place  as  if  it  had  always 
been  a  part  of  the  Christian  view  of  the 
future. 

6 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

And  finally,  the  last  way  of  looking 
at  this  mystery  is  the  way  of  supersti- 
tion on  the  one  hand,  and  of  so-called 
psychical  research  on  the  other.  One 
hesitates  to  class  them  together,  for  any 
fair-minded  observer  must  be  aware 
how  carefully  the  leaders  in  psychical 
research  strive  to  avoid  those  elements 
of  credulity,  fear,  and  commercial  ex- 
ploitation in  the  attitude  of  the  seeker 
toward  the  unknown  which  make  up 
what  we  call  superstition.  Psychical 
research  deserves  the  respect  even  of 
those  who  see  no  use  in  it  and  have  no 
use  for  it;  superstition  does  not.  Yet 
the  two  have  this  in  common,  that  they 
tend  to  subordinate  the  plain  duties, 
the  main  business  of  life,  to  a  study  of 
that  which  is  hidden.  They  are  both 
absorbed  in  an  inquisitive  and  over- 
7 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

anxious   search    for   whispers    in    the 
darkness. 

One  sits  in  his  little  amateur  wire- 
less laboratory,  listening  for  wandering 
flashes  from  the  ships  at  sea;  and  now 
and  then  he  hears  the  cross-currents 
crackling  in  the  air  from  amateurs  like 
himself.  There  are  many  of  them  "  lis- 
tening in,"  and  some  of  them,  he  sus- 
pects, sending  out  spurious  messages. 
Sometimes  in  a  great  storm  there  is  a 
strange  humming  in  his  ears,  as  if  un- 
known, powerful  currents  of  the  upper 
air  were  interfering  with  his  aerial. 
And  once,  when  the  night  was  very 
still,  he  thought  he  heard  one  of  the 
great  Government  stations  on  the  Isth- 
mus calling  Arlington ;  but  whether  the 
call  came  from  the  land  or  from  the 
ocean  side,  he  could  not  tell.  He  only 
8 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

knows  that  the  air  is  full  of  voices,  and 
that  for  most  of  them  his  little  toy  ap- 
paratus is  totally  inadequate.  He  does 
not  conclude  that  there  is  nothing  there, 
but  rather  that  there  is  too  much  for 
man  as  yet  to  comprehend,  or  even  to 
apprehend.  In  other  words,  those  who 
have  looked  longest  and  most  patiently 
into  the  alleged  phenomena  of  psychi- 
cal research  are,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
readiest  to  admit  the  marvels  of  in- 
tercommunication between  the  minds 
of  living  men  across  wide  spaces,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  profoundly  skepti- 
cal of  the  existence  of  any  real  evi- 
dence for  communication  with  the 
spirit  world. 

Now  it  may  be  interesting  for  once 
to  dismiss  all  these  ways  of  looking  at 
the  future — the  fatalistic  way,  the  raor- 

9 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

bid,  agnostic  way,  the  stoic,  the  devout, 
the  occult — and  to  consider  this  most 
tremendous  of  all  subjects  from  a  new 
angle. 


II 

UPON  the  threshold  of  such  an  in- 
quiry, does  any  one  have  the  feeling 
that  these  thoughts  are  uncanny,  un- 
wholesome, unwise?  Is  it  morbid  for 
an  immortal  being  to  look  more  than 
thirty  or  forty  years  ahead?  We  do 
that  when  we  are  taking  out  life  insur- 
ance, or  making  a  long  lease,  or  writing 
a  will.  In  youth  we  feel  immortal,  and 
will  have  no  bounds  to  our  domain. 
Can  it  be  that  as  years  come  and  wis- 
dom widens,  the  wise  man  ought  to 
accustom  himself  to  shorter  instead  of 
longer  views?  Why  climb,  except  for 
the  hope  of  seeing  far?  Hamlet,  though 
not  unaware  of  the  danger  of  "thinking 
too  precisely  on  the  event,"  yet  speaks 
ii 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

with  assurance  of  the  duty  of  man  to 
face  the  future  without  dismay:  — 

"  Sure  he  that  made  us  with  such  large  discourse, 
Looking  before  and  after,  gave  us  not 
That  capability  and  god-like  reason 
To  fust  in  us  unused." 

Or,  if  it  be  not  morbid,  is  it,  as  some 
seem  to  think,  irreverent  to  speculate 
beyond  the  meager  revelation  of  con- 
ventional religion?  Is  it  profane  to  turn 
from  the  earthly  altar,  where  we  think 
we  worship  God,  to  gaze  up  that  wind- 
ing stairway  by  which  our  friends  have 
ascended  into  the  unknown?  Is  there 
not  also  a  great  altar  there  ? 

We  find  it  profoundly  stimulating  to 
study  in  anthropology  and  in  history  the 
question,  whence  we  have  come.  Why 
should  it  be  either  dispiriting  or  unspir- 
itual  to  study,  wherever  and  however  we 
12 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

may,  the  equally  interesting  question, 
whither  we  are  going?  In  this  world  of 
destiny  much  depends  upon  whether  we 
stand  weakly  waiting  for  destiny  to  come 
and  find  us,  or  march  boldly  forward  to 
meet  it  in  the  open.  Lack  of  complete 
information  about  the  future  is  no  reason 
for  indifference,  nor  is  the  lack  of  ade- 
quate means  of  getting  information.  We 
are  all  looking  further  than  we  can  see, 
hoping  more  than  we  can  prove,  and  at- 
tempting more  than  we  can  finish;  if  we 
are  not,  we  are  dead  already,  and  some- 
body had  better  tell  us  so.  At  sea  the 
lookout  ahead  is  doubled  in  foggy 
weather.  What  a  fool  that  captain  would 
be  who  called  in  the  watch  because  the 
heavy  curtain  of  ocean  mist  shut  out  the 
horizon.  In  our  attitude  toward  all  the 
other  secrets  of  the  universe,  the  less  we 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

can  see  the  harder  we  look.  Here  alone, 
because  we  can  prove  nothing,  we  are 
asked  to  refrain  from  reasonable  infer- 
ence and  useful  hypothesis. 

This  demand  for  a  prohibition  of  all 
speculative  inquiry  concerning  the  future 
must  be  denied.  We  are  not  to  shut  our 
eyes  when  the  way  grows  obscure;  that 
is  neitherfaith  nor  common  sense.  "  Man 
goeth  to  his  long  home."  He  knows  it, 
and  has  always  known  it.  He  knows  not 
where  that  home  maybe,  but  he  knows 
that  he  is  a  pilgrim.  It  is  useless  for  him 
to  pretend  otherwise.  Austin  Dobson 
gives  us  the  picture  in  his  couplet:  — 

"  Time  goes,  you  say ;  ah,  no, 
Alas,  time  stays ;  we  go." 

But  why  "alas"?  Lorado  Taft,  our 
idealist  sculptor,  sees  no  melancholy  in  the 
poet's  verse.  He  has  made  it  the  theme  of 
H 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

a  great  sculptural  group  which  will  some 
day  find  a  place  in  Washington  Park, 
Chicago,  at  the  western  end  of  the  broad 
boulevard  called  the  Midway  Plaisance. 
His  Fountain  of  Time,  of  which  models 
have  already  been  exhibited,  will  repre- 
sent the  heroic  figure  of  Time  overlooking 
the  vast,  hurrying  procession  of  mankind. 
Out  of  ajetof  waterriseinfantforms,  who 
turn  their  childish  footsteps  after  the 
youths  and  maidens  that  have  preceded 
them.  In  the  center  of  the  long  column 
are  warriors,  horsemen,  strong  men  and 
beautiful  women,  all  marching  forward 
with  heads  erect  and  banners  floating. 
Beyond  them  are  the  bending  shoulders 
of  the  aged  and  the  halting  footsteps  of 
those  who  are  about  to  sink  back  to 
the  earth  from  which  they  came.  But 
all,  all — the  children,  the  youths,  the 

15 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

heroes,  and  the  grandsires  every  one  — 
are  gazing  forward  toward  some  goal 
they  cannot  see.  This  vision  it  is  that 
keeps  them  marching;  and  for  it,  we 
may  be  sure,  Time  envies  them  their 
eternity. 

It  is  not  the  brief  cycle  of  the  body, 
dust  to  dust,  but  this  long  straight  line 
of  the  soul's  vision,  that  will  make  Lo- 
rado  Taft's  fountain  a  work  of  prophetic 
genius  when  it  is  some  day  embodied 
in  marble;  not  the  dust,  rising  in  tran- 
sient foam  and  falling  in  vanishing 
spray,  but  the  spirit  that  endures  as 
seeing  that  which  is  invisible;  man  the 
unconquerable,  man  the  imperishable, 
man  the  explorer  and  the  heir  of  eter- 
nity. 

"  Time  goes,  you  say ;  ah,  no, 
Thank  God,  time  stays ;  we  go." 

16 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

There  is  then  no  theoretical  ground 
upon  which  we  need  hesitate  to  consider 
the  subject  of  living  for  the  future.  If 
there  were  any  practical  ground,  it  would 
be  the  fact  that  under  a  superseded  the- 
ology Christian  people  once  thought  so 
much  of  the  future  that  they  forgot  the 
present  and  its  duties.  That  is  no  longer 
true.  The  pendulum  has  swung  so  far 
the  other  way  that  to  listen  to  some 
of  our  preachers  one  would  almost 
think  they  were  as  much  ashamed  of 
heaven  as  they  have  long  been  politely 
skeptical  of  hell.  The  gospel  of  the 
kingdom  is  now  so  nearly  identified  in 
some  quarters  with  model  tenements, 
district  nurses,  and  eugenics,  that  one 
wonders  if  hygiene  and  holiness  are  the 
same  thing.  Religion  has  done  so  much 
during  the  past  thirty  years  to  make  this 
17 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

world  a  better  place  to  live  in  that  some 
of  us  have  become  curiously  indifferent 
to  the  relative  values  of  sociology  and 
character.  Cleanliness  is  indeed  next 
to  godliness,  whatever  the  mediaeval 
church  may  have  thought  about  it;  but 
it  does  not  follow  that  a  daily  bath  is 
a  complete  substitute  for  the  holy 
communion. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  Christianity  may 
succeed  in  bringing  into  the  industrial 
world  enough  of  unselfishness  (or  of  en- 
lightened selfishness,  whichever  it  may 
be)  to  insure  the  success  of  profit-shar- 
ing and  the  living  wage  and  other  cor- 
rectives for  economic  inequalities.  But 
we  may  find  then  that  neither  employers 
nor  employed  have  thereby  added  mate- 
rially to  the  store  of  heavenly  treasures. 
No  one  doubts  that  to  abolish  bad  drain- 
18 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

age  or  improve  the  milk  supply  is  a 
Christian  act;  but  it  may  have  less  than 
we  suppose  in  common  with  the  real 
elevation  of  mankind.  Both  in  sanitation 
and  in  scientific  and  mechanical  effi- 
ciency this  age  is  immeasurably  superior 
to  all  preceding  centuries.  Yet  it  has 
not  been  shown  that  in  intellectual  effi- 
ciency or  spiritual  quality  we  can  even 
equal  the  past. 

Such  reflections  diminish  in  no  sense 
the  value  of  the  social  emphasis  in  con- 
temporary Christianity,  but  they  do  lead 
us  to  inquire  whether  the  loss  of  the  long 
look  forward  and  upward  is  not  to  be 
regretted.  Let  us  agree  that  our  ances- 
tors thought  too  much  about  the  future 
and  too  little  about  the  present.  Let  us 
agree  that  for  practical  purposes  it  is 
best  to  live  chiefly  as  if  we  were  prepar- 

19 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

ing  to  leave  the  earth  a  better  place  than 
we  found  it.  But  let  us  also  give  our- 
selves the  pleasure  now  and  then  of  a 
brief  excursion  into  the  world  where 
we  shall  all  be  when  men  celebrate 
the  centenary  of  the  great  war,  and  of 
the  great  peace  that  we  hope  shall  fol- 
low. What  sort  of  world  must  it  be? 
And  what  bearing  has  that  world  upon 
this? 

John  Ruskin  complained,  in  the  intro- 
duction to  "  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive," 
of  "the  difficulty  of  knowing  whether 
to  address  one's  audience  as  believing 
or  not  believing  in  any  other  world  than 
this."  He  said  :  — 

"  If  you  address  any  average  modern 
English  company  as  believing  in  an  eter- 
nal life,  and  then  endeavor  to  draw  any 
conclusions  from  this  assumed  belief  as 
20 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

to  their  present  business,  they  will  forth- 
with tell  you  that i  What  you  say  is  very 
beautiful,  but  it  is  not  practical.'  If,  on 
the  contrary,  you  frankly  address  them 
as  unbelievers  in  eternal  life,  and  try  to 
draw  any  consequences  from  that  unbe- 
lief —  they  immediately  hold  you  for  an 
accursed  person,  and  shake  off  the  dust 
from  their  feet  at  you.  .  .  .  The  dilemma 
is  unavoidable.  Men  must  either  here- 
after live  or  hereafter  die;  fate  may 
be  bravely  met,  and  conduct  wisely  or- 
dered, on  either  expectation,  but  never  in 
hesitation  between  ungrasped  hope  and 
unconfronted  fear.  We  usually  believe 
in  immortality  so  far  as  to  avoid  prepara- 
tion for  death ;  and  in  mortality  so  far  as 
to  avoid  preparation  for  anything  after 
death.  Whereas  the  wise  man  will  at 
least  hold  himself  ready  for  one  or  other 
21 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

of  two  events  of  which  one  or  other 
is  inevitable,  and  will  have  all  things 
ended  in  order  for  his  sleep,  or  left  in 
order  for  his  awakening." 


Ill 

IN  the  following  inquiry,  which  as- 
sumes the  belief  in  immortality  as  a 
starting-point,  images  derived  from  the 
Scriptures  will  be  deliberately  avoided, 
for  the  sake  of  whatever  freshness  of  ap- 
prehension may  come  from  studying  an 
old  subject  from  a  new  angle.  Further- 
more, the  speculations  of  spiritualism, 
theosophy,  and  other  systems  that  have 
their  center  in  the  invisible  world  will 
not  be  examined  or  criticised.  Our  pur- 
pose is  not  philosophical  but  practical; 
not  metaphysical  but  ethical.  There  are 
several  things  about  the  future  life  that 
seem  absolutely  certain,  provided  we 
believe  in  personal  immortality  at  all. 
That  belief,  of  course,  is  a  matter  not  of 

23 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

proof  but  of  faith  or  of  intuition;  and  the 
correctness  of  it  is  not  an  issue  in  the 
presentdiscussion.  Readers  who  expect 
to  find  here  any  arguments  in  support  of 
immortality  itself  will  be  disappointed. 
But  readers  who  believe  in  personal  im- 
mortality, without  being  able  to  attach 
to  that  belief  any  sense  of  reality  or  any 
practical  consequences,  may  perhaps  be 
led  into  certain  inferences,  conjectures, 
and  hopes,  that  will  be  not  without  in- 
terest for  the  intellectual  and  the  moral 
life.' 

1  Although  the  inquiry  Is  not  metaphysical,  two 
philosophical  objections  are  likely  to  occur  to  some 
readers  of  these  pages.  In  the  first  place,  the  language 
used  may  at  times  seem  to  imply  a  dualistic  view  of  the 
universe,  in  which  matter  and  spirit,  or  mind,  are  re- 
garded as  two  separate  and  more  or  less  antagonistic 
entities.  Such  a  misapprehension  of  the  writer's  posi- 
tion would  be  due  to  the  limitations  of  language  in 
dealing  with  fundamental  questions  in  a  non-technical 
way.  It  is  not  easy  to  see  what  part  that  which  we 
colloquially  call  "matter"  can  have  in  a  spiritual 

24 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Our  reasoning  will  be  altogether  de- 
ductive or  a  priori  inference  from  the 

world ;  and  from  this  point  of  view  a  spiritual  being, 
deprived  of  his  physical  body  and  continuing  to  exist, 
might  be  thought  of  as  pure  spirit  unrelated  to  matter. 
But  of  course  the  universe  is  really  not  a  duality  but  a 
unit ;  matter  is  probably  only  the  manifestation  of  the 
divine  as  Force,  while  mind  is  the  manifestation  of  the 
divine  as  Consciousness.  And  a  new  organization  of 
forces,  dominated  by  laws  partly  unknown  to  us  at  pres- 
ent, may  serve  the  individual  soul  in  the  future  life  as 
his  means  of  impression  and  expression,  his  "spiritual 
body."  Instead  of  a  greater  gap  than  now  appears  to 
exist  between  mind  and  matter,  there  may  be  a  higher 
synthesis.  The  subject  involves  so  many  profound 
metaphysical  problems,  over  which  wise  men  have 
pondered  for  ages,  that  one  could  not  hope  to  do  more 
here  than  to  enter  a  caveat  against  the  charge  of  dual- 
ism. It  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  add  an  even  more 
emphatic  disclaimer  of  pantheism.  In  view  of  the  de- 
liberate avoidance  in  this  essay  of  Christian  doctrines 
about  human  destiny,  it  may  be  well,  however,  to  say 
that  the  whole  discussion  is  based  on  the  reality  of 
what  we  call  personality,  and  that  personality  implies 
a  personal  God. 

Again,  the  argument  from  analogy,  here  so  widely 
used,  may  be  attacked  on  the  ground  that  we  are  so 
utterly  ignorant  of  the  nature  of  the  invisible  world 
that  no  attempted  analogy  can  carry  any  force,  not 
even  a  probability  or  a  plausible  hypothesis.  The  ob- 
jection is  a  grave  one ;  and  if  anything  approaching 
philosophical  demonstration  were  here  attempted,  it 

25 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

assumed  and  implied  meanings  of  the 
two  words  "personal  immortality." 
That  these  speculations  can  ever  be 
checked  by  any  sort  of  credible  confir- 
mation from  the  other  side  is  highly 
doubtful.  There  is  no  commoner  obser- 
vation made  by  those  who  examine  the 
alleged  communications  from  the  spirit 
world  than  that  their  uniform  triviality 
forbids  us  to  consider  them  seriously, 
even  if  no  other  question  were  raised. 
In  the  main,  the  criticism  is  justified.1 
While  scientific  investigation  of  the  so- 
called  psychic  phenomena  is  both  inter- 
would  be  fatal.  But  we  start  with  the  postulate  of  per- 
sonal immortality,  and  must  inevitably  attach  to  the 
terms  such  meanings  as  the  present  world  gives  us.  If 
one  rejects  the  postulate,  and  prefers  to  substitute  for 
personal  immortality  either  annihilation  or  a  merging 
of  the  individual  soul  into  the  divine,  he  will  of  course 
not  care  to  read  beyond  this  point.  The  argument  from 
analogy,  precarious  as  it  is,  is  the  only  form  of  reason- 
ing that  can  yield  even  speculative  results  here. 
1  But  see  below,  page  129,  footnote. 

26 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

esting  and  indirectly  valuable  to  the 
world,  we  seem  not  yet  to  have  derived 
from  it  any  atom  of  proved  fact  regard- 
ing the  nature  of  immortality.  Indeed, 
many  who  would  be  glad  to  think  other- 
wise feel  obliged  to  deny  that  any  con- 
firmation of  immortality  itself  can  be 
found  by  the  unbiased  mind  in  all  the 
curious  records  of  more  than  thirty  years 
of  organized  collection  of  data  in  this 
field.  Such  fascinating  books  as  that 
of  the  late  F.  W.  H.  Myers  on  "  Human 
Personality  and  Its  Survival  of  Bodily 
Death,"  and  Henry  Holt's  "On  the 
Cosmic  Relations,"  derive  their  chief 
interest  for  many  a  thoughtful  reader 
from  their  searching  and  often  brilliant 
analysis  of  the  inner  life  as  lived  in  the 
body,  rather  than  from  any  of  the  occult 
marvels  which  they  relate  or  the  theo- 
27 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

ries  based  thereon.  After  all  such  read- 
ing one  is  left  with  a  disappointed,  but 
still  with  an  open  mind.  Hamlet,  who 
was  a  charter  member  of  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research,  and  lived  and  died 
in  its  service,  has  summed  it  all  up  in 
the  familiar  lines, — 

"  There  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth, 

Horatio, 
Than  are  dreamt  of  in  your  philosophy." 

But  in  this  discussion  nothing  will 
be  based  on  occult  speculation.  We 
are  here  interested  to  examine  solely 
those  implications  concerning  immortal- 
ity which  arise  from  what  we  know  of 
personality  and  personal  life.  Assum- 
ing that  we  shall  survive  as  persons, 
what  follows? 


IV 

IN  the  first  place,  our  future  life  will 
not  be  idle.  Instead  of  repeating  the 
rather  trite  and  tasteless  witticisms  at 
the  expense  of  a  heaven  where  rest  and 
worship  are  eternal,  we  may  simply  ask 
for  a  candid  answer  to  these  questions: 
"  Do  you  want  immortality  with  nothing 
to  do?  If.it  were  offered  you  on  those 
terms,  would  you  not  find  a  way  of  re- 
fusing it?  Would  you  not  rather  be  ex- 
tinguished than  exist  forever  in  a  world 
full  of  idle  saints?" 

The  questions  answer  themselves. 
Life,  the  life  of  the  soul  as  well  as  of 
the  body,  is  in  its  very  nature  rhythmi- 
cal. It  is  made  up  not  altogether  either 
of  effort  or  of  relaxation.  There  is  the 
29 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

work  and  the  play  and  the  rest.  After 
the  sleep  there  is  the  waking,  after  the 
hour  of  calm  and  contemplation  the  day 
of  struggle  and  of  victory.  However  it 
may  be  with  the  oriental  mystic,  reli- 
gion for  us  is  only  half  renunciation  and 
communion.  The  other  half  is  the  reali- 
zation of  the  higher  self  through  effort. 
If  we  are  assuming  a  "personal  immor- 
tality," both  terms  of  the  assumption 
forbid  an  idle  heaven.  For  personality 
demands  effort  to  resist  the  constant 
tendencies  toward  degeneration  and  im- 
personality; and  immortality,  which  is 
only  another  name  for  life,  must,  if  it 
be  anything  like  the  life  ive  know, 
represent  a  permanent  resistance  to  the 
forces  of  spiritual  mortality.  There  must, 
if  the  soul  really  lives  hereafter  and  is 
not  merely  preserved  or  embalmed  in  an 
3° 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

arrested  state,  be  an  endless  spiritual 
integration,  in  order  to  prevent  the  far 
easier  disintegration  that  so  easily  over- 
takes us.  This  is  by  no  means  a  sinister 
suggestion  that  we  may  have  to  carry 
into  another  world  our  weary  struggle 
against  moral  failure  and  collapse;  it  is 
only  a  reminder  that  if  heaven  be,  as 
most  of  us  think,  a  place  of  moral  prog- 
ress and  improvement,  it  must  also  be 
a  place  of  moral  effort.  In  some  form 
or  other,  the  discipline  and  the  delight  of 
work  must  not  be  altogether  lacking. 

What  a  disappointing  heaven  it  would 
be,  if  we  should  find  when  we  got  used 
to  it  that  all  the  really  interesting  work 
belonged  to  the  angels;  that  whenever 
a  messenger  was  to  be  sent  somewhere 
to  avert  a  danger  or  to  announce  a  joy, 
the  task  was  assigned  to  an  impossibly 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

perfect  being  who  had  never  lived  on 
earth,  and  so  had  never  really  done  any- 
thing to  earn  the  coveted  privilege  of 
work!  If  this  sounds  flippant,  one  may 
put  it  in  more  decorous  words,  but  some- 
how the  question  must  be  answered :  "  Is 
it  not  certain  that  a  future  life  worth 
having  will  give  us  something  to  do  that 
is  worth  doing,  and  supply  us  with  the 
means  to  do  it?" 


V 

IN  the  second  place,  if  the  future  life 
is  not  to  be  an  idle  life,  its  activities 
must  be  such  as  belong  to  the  realm  of 
the  spirit. 

By  the  spirit  (or  soul)  will  be  meant 
throughout  this  discussion  all  of  the 
mind  that  can  survive  physical  death. 
We  are  not  here  raising  the  grave 
question  how  any  of  the  mind  can  re- 
main after  the  loss  of  the  brain,  which 
has  seemed  to  be  its  organ.  That  in  it- 
self is  a  staggering  thing  to  believe,  but 
most  of  us  do  believe  it,  nevertheless. 
We  believe  it  as  a  matter  of  faith;  and 
the  whole  of  the  present  inquiry  is  noth- 
ing more  than  an  attempt,  not  to  defend 
that  faith  by  reasoning,  but  to  apply 

33 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

reason  to  the  analysis,  the  illustration, 
the  imaginative  development  of  a  belief 
which  must  itself  be  taken  for  granted. 
A  very  large  part  of  the  mystery  and 
gloom  with  which  some  religious  people 
surround  this  whole  subject  is  due  to  an 
untenable  and  impossible  psychology. 
Many  persons  have  a  feeling,  which 
they  have  never  put  into  words,  and 
would  perhaps  be  slow  to  confess,  that 
somehow  the  only  part  of  them  that  can 
survive  death  is  the  specifically  religious 
instinct.  They  think  of  the  soul  as  that 
part  of  their  total  personality  which  is 
supposed  to  be  active  chiefly  on  Sunday 
mornings,  and  when  they  are  saying 
their  prayers  and  reading  their  Bibles. 
The  notion  is  about  on  a  par  with  the 
idea  of  heaven  that  most  of  us  acquired 
in  childhood,  as  a  place  up  in  the  sky 

34 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

near  the  stars.  Both  are  illogical  survivals 
from  a  type  of  religion  which  has  itself 
well  nigh  disappeared,  wherein  spiritual 
experience  was  divorced  from  daily  life. 
It  is  unthinkable  to-day  that  there  can 
be  such  a  thing  as  a  soul  or  spirit  in 
man  which  is  independent  of  his  intelli- 
gence, his  feeling,  his  will. 

The  fact  that  the  Greek  and  the  Latin 
languages  have  separate  words  for  soul 
and  spirit,  as  well  as  various  words  for 
the  different  functions  of  the  mind,  has 
tended  to  confuse  and  embarrass  our 
modern  thought.  In  popular  usage,  and 
in  this  present  discussion,  the  words 
"soul"  and  "  spirit"  are  practically  syn- 
onymous. It  is  possible,  even  in  Eng- 
lish, to  make  a  distinction  between  them 
in  a  philosophical  vocabulary,  but  un- 
necessary and  over-subtle  in  ordinary 

35 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

speech.  But  all  of  us  feel  that  between 
them  on  the  one  hand  and  the  word 
"  mind  "  on  the  other  there  is  some  sort 
of  difference.  When  we  speak  of  the 
mind,  we  use  it  as  a  collective  name  for 
all  those  thoughts,  feelings,  and  volitions 
which  appear  in  the  stream  of  conscious- 
ness at  one  time  or  another ;  many  of  them 
trivial,  many  of  them  almost  or  entirely 
automatic,  many  of  them  entirely  de- 
pendent on  the  bodily  functions.  When 
we  speak  of  the  soul,  we  do  not  think, 
as  the  ancients  did,  of  some  subtle  vital 
principle  or  essence.  We  do  not  think 
of  the  spirit  as  a  breath  or  a  vapor.  We 
think  rather,  in  either  case,  of  that  which 
is  dominant  in  personality,  the  higher 
feelings,  the  higher  ideals,  the  immedi- 
ate intuitions  of  truth,  and  most  of  all, 
the  will. 

36 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

It  is  both  interesting  and  important 
to  observe  that  when  we  speak  of  the 
"  souls  "  of  men  whose  higher  feelings 
are  very  low,  whose  ideals  are  sensual, 
whose  intuitions  of  truth,  if  they  have 
any,  are  rudimentary,  and  whose  domi- 
nant control  is  not  will  but  impulse,  we 
mean  by  that  word  their  assumed  capa- 
city for  a  spiritual  growth  which  can 
arise  only  from  a  mental  stimulus. 
About  all  the  "soul"  such  a  man 
seems  to  have  is  a  dormant  and  unde- 
veloped will,  which  can  be  aroused 
only  through  his  dormant  recollections, 
his  perverted  imagination,  his  blunted 
feelings.  In  him  the  soul  is  apparently 
only  a  very  small  and  insignificant  part 
of  the  mind,  and  derives  its  supreme 
importance  in  the  moral  world  from 
the  mysterious  power  of  the  hidden 
37 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

seeds   of   goodness    to   germinate    and 
grow  in  any  soil. 

What  we  must  for  the  moment  dwell 
upon  is  that  those  higher  aspects  of 
consciousness,  those  factors  of  person- 
ality, which  we  call  the  soul,  and  be- 
lieve to  be  immortal,  can  by  no  means 
be  separated  from  what  we  call  the 
mind.  Remember  how  closely  the  dawn 
of  religious  experience  in  the  normal 
life  is  associated  with  the  physical  and 
psychical  changes  of  childhood  and 
adolescence.  Consider  how  inseparably 
the  spiritual  experiences  of  mature  life 
are  connected  on  the  side  of  religious 
aspiration  with  such  mental  experi- 
ences as  those  of  imagination  and  mem- 
ory, in  the  recollection  of  past  events 
and  in  the  emotional  effects  upon  us  of 
poetry,  music,  painting,  and  architec- 

38 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

ture;  and  equally  connected  on  the 
side  of  conduct  with  the  duties,  the 
problems,  the  physical  and  mental  crises 
of  the  individual  and  of  society.  A 
soul  which  had  lost  all  its  powers  of 
contact  with  the  rich  and  wonderful 
treasures  of  memory  and  imagination, 
which  could  no  longer  perceive  and 
conceive  and  reason  as  we  do  (or  in 
some  better  way),  would  be  no  friend 
of  ours.  He  might  be  an  angel,  but  we 
do  not  want  to  be  angels.  We  want  to 
be  ourselves. 


VI 

IF  it  is  the  whole  man,  the  real  per- 
son, that  survives  the  death  of  the  body, 
then  it  ought  to  be  evident  to  any  one 
that  an  immortality  which  preserves 
only  the  one  religious  function  of  ado- 
ration or  worship  is  impossible,  and,  to 
the  healthy  mind,  undesirable.  If  "con- 
gregations ne'er  break  up,  and  Sab- 
baths have  no  end,"  many  of  us  besides 
the  traditional  small  boy  would  ask  to 
be  excused.  If  we  could  not  look 
forward  to  Monday  morning,  we  had 
rather  stop  at  Saturday  night. 

Frank  speech  on  this  subject  may  in- 
deed offend  sensitive  ears  long  used  to 
the  traditional  platitudes.  It  may  also 
trouble  the  souls  of  those  whose  inner 
40 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

life  is  so  wholly  and  genuinely  saintly 
that  the  heaven  of  Milton  or  of  Dante 
is  really  thinkable  and  congenial  to 
them.  All  that  one  can  reply  to  the 
one  class  is  that  if  we  had  more  frank- 
ness about  our  future  it  would  be  much 
better  for  our  present;  and  to  the  other, 
that  if  we  were  all  saints,  the  saintly 
future  of  devout  mediaeval  imagination 
would  doubtless  seem  as  attractive  to 
us  as  it  did  to  the  monkish  author  of 
"Jerusalem  the  Golden."  A  Cardinal 
Newman  can  write,  and  his  rapt  dis- 
ciples can  understand,  a  "Dream  of 
Gerontius."  But  if  we  really  believe, 
as  we  seem  to,  that  the  invisible  world 
is  full  of  people  who  were  not  while 
on  earth  primarily  given  to  religious 
ecstasy,  but  rather  to  the  plodding  pur- 
suit of  homely  duty,  we  must  make  a 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

place  for  them  incur  speculations.  And 
as  these  plain  people  are  in  the  majority 
in  this  world,  they  can  hardly  be  treated 
as  exceptional  in  the  next. 

It  cannot  be  irreverent  to  try  to  con- 
ceive of  a  sort  of  heaven  where  our 
dear  friends  the  beloved  physician,  the 
busy  man  of  affairs,  the  scholarly  sci- 
entist, the  soldier,  the  college  athlete, 
the  restless  boy,  the  home-loving  mother, 
the  playful  child,  have  been  happy  and 
busy  through  all  the  long  years  since 
they  left  us  behind.  If  we  are  to  think 
of  them  all  as  living  still  their  own 
lives,  doing  their  own  best  work,  play- 
ing their  own  best  play,  being  their 
own  best  selves,  then  we  must  think  of 
them  as  having  carried  with  them  all 
of  memory,  all  of  reason,  all  of  the  curi- 
osities and  interests  and  sympathies  and 
42 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

helpful  ministries  of  whatever  sort  that 
made  them  what  we  loved  and  honored 
here.  That  is  why  we  are  led  to  think 
that  the  spirit  which  is  immortal  is 
nothing  less  than  the  mind,  minus  only 
that  part  of  mental  life  clearly  tempo- 
rary because  dependent  on  the  body. 


VII 

BUT  to  say  that  the  spirit  is  nothing 
less  than  the  mind  —  with  the  excep- 
tion just  noted  —  is  not  to  say  that  the 
spirit  is  nothing  more  than  the  mind 
as  we  know  it.  If  it  were,  what  could 
we  hope  for  the  future  of  those  whose 
minds  have  given  way  under  the  strain 
of  life,  or  those  others  whose  minds 
were  from  the  beginning  clouded  and 
incapable  of  education?  Have  they  no 
souls  ?  Is  there  no  immortality  for  the 
innocent  victims  of  disease,  the  helpless 
tools  of  crime  ?  These  darker  mysteries 
might  well  appal  us  if  we  were  to  make 
the  fatal  error  of  identifying  soul  and 
brain,  or  brain  function.  But  who  that 
has  not  witnessed  some  of  the  miracles 
44 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

of  subconscious  life  suddenly  brought 
to  the  surface  in  hours  of  crisis  can 
realize  how  much  more  the  spirit  may 
be  than  the  conscious  mind  as  we  ordi- 
narily know  it?  What  vast  reservoirs 
of  spiritual  sympathy  and  endurance 
may  not  lie  hidden  beneath  the  com- 
monplaces of  our  little  days;  what  won- 
ders of  patience  beneath  the  worn-out 
nerves,  what  hidden  purity  below  the 
polluted  surface,  what  undiscovered 
heroism  in  the  defeated,  what  unused 
strength  in  the  weak,  what  hopes  of  sal- 
vation in  the  lost,  what  light  behind  the 
darkness,  what  life  within  the  dead? 

This  hidden  life,  this  real  life  of  the 
soul,  which  we  see  here  only  as  by 
lightning-flashes  in  a  storm,  is  a  won- 
derful thing.  Life  itself  is  the  great  sur- 
prise, the  unguessed  secret,  "  the  undis- 

45 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

covered  country  from  whose  bourne  no 
traveler  returns."  For  all  those  who 
really  understand  life  have  left  it,  and 
left  it  without  revealing  its  ultimate 
meaning.  If  we  could  read  all  its  mys- 
teries, we  could  have  heaven  here  and 
now.  The  human  mind  is  the  true  Apoc- 
alypse of  God,  and  out  of  it  or  nothing 
must  be  made  the  New  Jerusalem.  It 
is  too  precious  to  be  lost,  too  full  of 
worth  to  be  laid  away  like  an  outworn 
garment,  too  eternal  to  be  altogether 
bound  to  Time. 

"All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of 

good  shall  exist, 
Not  its  semblance,  but  itself ;  no  beauty,  nor 

good,  nor  power 
Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives 

for  the  melodist 
When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an 

hour." 


VIII 

WE  have  already  reasoned  from  the 
nature  of  personality  that  the  future  life 
must  be  an  active,  not  an  idle  life,  and 
that  its  activities  must  be  such  as  be- 
long to  the  spirit.  We  have  enlarged 
the  vague  popular  conception  of  the 
spirit  to  include  all  that  is  highest  in 
the  mind.  Now  we  must  inquire  what 
kind  of  activities  can  belong  to  a  spirit 
without  a  physical  body. 

Notice  that  it  is  the  physical  body 
only  that  we  must  learn  to  do  without 
Who  can  doubt  that  the  spirit  will  be 
somehow  equipped  with  senses  more 
acute,  and  means  of  expression  more 
accurate  and  more  powerful,  than  any 
of  which  we  know?  A  spirit  able  to 

47 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

know  but  not  to  tell,  able  to  wish  but 
not  to  do,  sensitive  to  force  but  incapa- 
ble of  exerting  force,  would  deserve 
our  pity,  not  our  admiration.  If  the  im- 
mortals, in  the  presence  of  mightier 
powers  than  we  have  yet  perceived, 
lack  even  such  humble  efficiency  as 
goes  with  human  hands  and  lips,  they 
are  but  souls  in  prison;  and  that  we 
may  be  quite  sure  they  are  not.  For 
immortality  is  only  another  name  for 
freedom.  But  of  what  sort  the  "  spirit- 
ual body "  may  be,  what  forces  it  may 
control,  what  limitations  it  may  have, 
what  relations  it  may  sustain  to  the 
world  of  time  and  space  which  is  all 
we  know,  are  questions  quite  beyond 
the  scope  of  this  discussion.  Knowing 
only  that  the  physical  body  must  be  left 
behind,  we  can  still  speculate  not  un- 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

profitably  on  the  question  how  far  a 
spirit  can  be  thought  of  as  active  with- 
out a  literal  voice  for  speech  or  a  fleshly 
hand  for  labor. 

It  is  not  so  hard  a  question  as  it  was 
a  generation  ago.  We  live  in  the  age  of 
wireless  —  the  wireless  telegraph,  the 
wireless  telephone,  wireless  transmis- 
sion of  electrical  power.  When  the  hu- 
man voice  can  be  heard  from  the  banks 
of  the  Potomac  to  the  Eiffel  Tower,  and 
its  echoes  roll  half  way  round  the  world 
to  Honolulu,  telepathy  no  longer  seems 
an  impossible  violation  of  natural  law. 
Force  acting  across  space  without  any 
medium  save  the  hypothetical  ether  that 
no  chemist  will  ever  find  is  a  common- 
place to-day.  Mind  acting  across  space 
through  the  same  medium,  or  without 
any  medium  save  mind  itself,  is  not  so 

49 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

wild  a  dream  as  it  seemed  even  twenty 
years  ago.  Much  is  here  possible  that 
is  yet  unproved,  and  perhaps  unprova- 
ble.  So  far  as  the  evidence  is  concerned, 
all  that  can  be  said  is  that  occasional 
genuine  instances  of  minds  acting  upon 
minds  at  a  long  distance  have  not  been 
plausibly  explained  as  coincidences ;  and 
that  mind-reading  at  short  distances, 
however  explained,  is  accepted  as  a  fact 
by  nearly  all  who  have  themselves  wit- 
nessed the  phenomena. 

But  what  I  have  reference  to  here  is 
something  much  less  obscure  and  less 
debatable.  You  get  a  letter  from  your 
friend,  and  your  whole  life  is  changed. 
Changed  by  what?  By  the  letter?  By  the 
ink  and  the  paper?  Absurd.  Changed 
entirely  by  your  own  motives  and  per- 
sonal history,  which  really  had  deter- 
So 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

mined  your  destiny  even  before  the  let- 
ter came?  Equally  absurd.  Changed, 
then,  by  your  own  powerful  image  in 
memory  and  imagination  of  your  friend, 
freshly  raised  to  the  focus  of  conscious- 
ness by  the  stimulus  of  the  letter  —  so, 
really,  changed  by  yourself  after  all? 
Often,  of  course,  it  is  so.  But  who  has 
not  felt,  if  only  once  or  twice,  the  in- 
visible hand  upon  the  shoulder,  the 
inaudible  whisper  in  the  soul,  that  is 
something  altogether  outside  the  self, 
that  commands  the  self,  and  draws  it 
away  from  the  compelling  past  and  to- 
ward the  mysterious  future  ?  Who  does 
not  know  the  difference  between  the 
commonplace  feeling,  "  I  am  thinking 
of  my  friend,"  and  the  rare  and  utterly 
different  feeling,  "  He  is  thinking  of 
me"?/ 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

May  one  go  further,  and  tread  upon 
holy  ground?  May  one  ask  you  what 
you  knew  to  be  true  when  you  found, 
after  the  gates  of  silence  had  closed 
upon  your  friend,  some  written  word 
of  his  meant  for  your  eye  alone,  some 
last  message,  some  treasured  memento, 
some  ultimate  revelation  of  unsuspected 
love  ?  Could  you  say  only  in  that  hour, 
"  So  he  thought  last  month,  last  year, 
so  he  loved,  so  he  hoped,  so  he  wished 
to  help,  but  could  not  then  because  he 
feared  to  be  misunderstood"?  Some  of 
us  can  say  more.  We  can  say,  "So  he 
thinks  and  loves  and  hopes  now.  So 
he  helps  me  now,  from  those  hills 
whence  cometh  all  my  help." 

It  is*  not  only  of  the  divine  that  we 
may  use  Matthew  Arnold's  phrase,  "  a 
power  not  ourselves  that  makes  for 
52 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

righteousness."  There  is  an  influence 
that  comes  to  us  unawares,  a  hush 
of  the  spirit,  a  high  summons  like 
a  bugle,  a  solemn  reminder  like  a  bell; 
a  strange  joy  that  sends  us  singing 
through  the  day.  These  are  the  things 
we  feel  and  do  not  tell.  There  ought 
to  be  many  things  we  feel  and  do 
not  tell,  for  only  so  perhaps  can  we 
keep  well  filled  the  spiritual  reser- 
voirs that  feed  the  streams  of  life.  May 
it  not  be  that  the  things  which  they 
who  have  gone  from  us  feel  and  do  not 
tell  are  among  the  things  that  keep  us 
going?  May  it  not  be  that  those  hours 
of  exaltation  to  which  we  look  forward 
and  backward  along  our  way  are  in  part 
our  times  of  sharing  the  rich,  deep  wis- 
dom of  the  dead? 

Who  knows,  indeed,  but  that  the  rea- 

53 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

son  why  the  immortals  speak  to  us  only 
through  their  eloquent  silence  is  that 
they  have  too  much  to  say?  What  have 
words  to  do  with  perfect  love?  At 
Christmas  time,  when  something  of 
childish  magic  comes  back  to  grace 
the  little  festivals  of  the  home,  when 
sparkling  snow  and  twinkling  candles 
lighten  the  eyes  of  old  and  young 
together,  may  it  not  be  that  there  is 
one  among  us  whom  we  see  not,  who 
is  not  known  in  the  breaking  of  bread, 
who  stands  beside  the  hearth  and  beside 
the  table,  and  hallows  all,  as  indeed  she 
used  to  do,  and  has  always  done  ? 

At  Easter,  your  soul  rises  again.  Who 
lifts  it?  Are  there  not  many  hands  that 
beckon,  and  many  voices  that  swell 
your  resurrection  choral  ?  Has  not  God 
invisible  helpers,  who  know  best  how  to 

54 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

reach  your  heart  and  mine  and  make  us 
better?  "This  corruptible  must  put  on 
incorruption,  and  this  mortal  must  put 
on  immortality."  When  shall  we  begin 
to  put  it  on,  and  how,  if  there  be  not  some 
few  who  already  wear  the  white  gar- 
ments of  eternity,  and  can  show  us  how 
to  weave  heaven  out  of  earth?  It  may 
be  fancy  and  it  may  be  fact,  that  some 
of  us,  if  we  are  ever  saved,  will  be 
saved  by  the  patience  of  our  unseen 
friends. 

Of  the  activities  possible,  then,  in  a 
spiritual  world,  the  first  and  perhaps 
the  greatest  may  be  the  silent  influence 
for  good  upon  other  spirits,  in  both 
worlds.  Influence  for  good  is  a  very 
broad  term.  It  may  mean  the  enlighten- 
ment of  error,  the  reinforcement  of 
weakness,  the  steady,  persistent  re- 

55 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

minder  of  past  privilege  and  aspiration. 
Matthew  Arnold  understood  this  when 
he  wrote:  — 

"  We  cannot  kindle  when  we  will 
The  fire  which  in  the  heart  resides ; 
The  spirit  bloweth  and  is  still, 
In  mystery  our  soul  abides. 

But  tasks  in  hours  of  insight  willed 
Can  be  through  hours  of  gloom  fulfilled." 

Hours  of  insight;  hours  sometimes  of 
a  purely  intellectual  insight,  when  the 
worth  of  the  moral  ideal  is  suddenly  and 
briefly  revealed  in  all  its  beauty.  But 
hours  often  when  your  good  angel  says, 
"  Remember ! "  You  ask  in  vain,  whether 
in  petulance  or  in  prayer,  "  Remember 
what?"  The  answer  comes  only  as  be- 
fore, like  a  distant  bell  that  sounds  the 
passing  hours,  "Remember,  remem- 
ber!" It  is  life's  warning  signal,  eter- 

56 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

nity's  cipher  message  to  time,  the  fu- 
ture's summons  to  the  present.  There 
are  many  that  send  that  message  to  us 
by  night  and  by  day;  many  that  live 
beyond  the  mountains,  and  some  that 
sleep  beyond  the  sea;  all  of  them 
friends. 

John  Masefield,  in  one  of  his  poems 
on  the  war,  has  said:  — 

"  If  there  be  any  life  beyond  the  grave, 
It  must  be  near  the  men  and  things  we  love, 
Some  power  of  quick  suggestion  how  to  save, 
Touching  the  living  soul  as  from  above. 

"  An  influence  from  the  earth  from  those  dead 

hearts 

So  passionate  once,  so  deep,  so  truly  kind, 
That  in  the  living  child  the  spirit  starts, 
Feeling  companioned  still,  not  left  behind." 

George  Eliot  wrote,  "  What  makes 
life  dreary  is  the  want  of  motive."  She 

57 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

might  have  added  that  the  want  of  mo- 
tive in  the  popular  conception  of  immor- 
tality makes  it  even  drearier  than  life. 
Her  own  adequate  motive  for  this  world 
was  duty  for  duty's  sake,  duty  viewed 
as  self-conquest,  self-renunciation,  re- 
sistance to  instinct  and  desire;  and  for 
the  next  world  she  hoped,  rejecting  as 
she  did  the  definitely  personal  immor- 
tality of  the  Christian  faith,  for  a  hum- 
ble and  indistinguishable  voice  in  that 
which  she  beautifully  called  "  the  choir 
invisible."  In  her  poetic  thought  the 
dead  survive  in  memory;  they  are  re- 
vived when  we  remember  them  and 
are  inspired  by  their  example.  They 

"  live  again 

In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence  ;  live 
In  pulses  stirred  to  generosity, 
In  deeds  of  daring  rectitude,  in  scorn 

58 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

For  miserable  aims  that  end  with  self, 

In  thoughts  sublime  that  pierce  the  night  like 

stars, 
And  with   their   mild    persistence  urge  man's 

search 
To  vaster  issues." 

According  to  such  a  view  the  dead, 
though  dead  indeed,  may  through  mem- 
ory and  history  yield  motives  to  living 
souls  who  otherwise  might  perish  of 
inertia.  But  in  a  far  less  vague  and  un- 
satisfying sense  we,  who  believe  in  per- 
sonal immortality,  may  think  of  the 
future  as  a  time  when  it  may  be  our 
duty,  our  privilege,  our  delight,  to  give 
back  to  earth  in  spiritual  energy  what 
heaven  has  given  us  here. 

To  suppose,  as  we  commonly  do,  that 
such  wordless,  subtle  communication 
from  one  human  spirit  to  another  is  im- 
possible, or  belongs  among  the  improb- 

59 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

able  speculations  of  poets  and  mystics, 
is  really  a  very  dangerous  and  radical 
doubt.  Our  belief  in  the  reality  of  prayer 
as  spiritual  communion  with  the  unseen 
might  be  gravely  undermined  or  de- 
stroyed by  a  general  denial  at  this  point. 
For,  so  far  as  we  know,  it  may  not 
be  the  mere  omnipotence  of  God  that 
makes  him  able  to  communicate  im- 
mediately with  us  through  prayer;  it 
may  be  just  the  fact  that  he  is  a  spirit. 
Perhaps  some  of  those  who  lightly 
brush  aside  the  suggestion  of  telepathy 
among  the  living,  and  of  any  kind  of 
spiritual  influence  of  the  invisible  world 
upon  the  visible,  might  think  twice 
about  it  if  they  perceived  that  their  ob- 
jection, when  it  is  a  priori,  verges  upon 
materialism,  and  tends  to  make  prayer 
and  worship  irrational. 
60 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Let  us  admit  frankly  that  there  is  no 
objective  evidence  whatever  for  the 
speculation  that  the  spirits  of  the  dead 
may  be  near  the  living,  aiding  and  en- 
couraging them  without  articulate  mes- 
sages. It  is  only  a  guess;  but,  in  view 
of  all  the  analogies,  not  an  unwarranted 
guess.  Tennyson  did  not  believe  in  the 
reality  of  spirit  messages,  but  he  wrote, 
in  "  In  Memoriam  " :  — 

"  Be  near  me  when  my  light  is  low, 

When  the  blood  creeps,  and  the  nerves 

prick 

And^tingle ;  and  the  heart  is  sick 
And  all  the  wheels  of  Being  slow. 

"  Be  near  us  when  we  climb  or  fall ; 

Ye  watch  like  God  the  rolling  hours 
With  larger,  other  eyes  than  ours, 
To  make  allowance  for  us  all." 

And  if  the  undying  do  indeed  so  watch 
61 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

and  guard  the  living,  it  must  be,  as 
Tennyson  said,  that  they  "  make  allow- 
ance for  us  all."  They  know  our  frame; 
they  remember  that  we  are  dust. 


IX 

WE  are  considering  the  possible  ac- 
tivities of  a  purely  spiritual  world,  and 
the  first  that  has  suggested  itself  to 
us  has  been  the  silent  communication 
of  spiritual  refreshment  and  energy  to 
the  living.  What  other  occupations 
may  there  be  in  the  life  of  the  fu- 
ture? 

Surely,  for  one  thing,  there  will  be 
the  occupation  of  discovery,  the  joy  of 
finding  out  that  which  is  new.  Robert 
Browning  wrote  to  his  wife  in  that  per- 
fect love-poem  entitled  "  By  the  Fire- 
side,"— 

"  Think,  when  our  one  soul  understands 
The  great  Word  which  makes  all  things 
new — 

63 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

When  earth  breaks  up  and  Heaven  expands  — 

How  will  the  change  strike  me  and  you 
In  the  House  not  made  with  hands  ?  " 

And  it  was  also  Browning,  who  is,  even 
more  than  Tennyson,  the  poet  of  im- 
mortality, who  wrote  of  the  wonders 
we  shall  perhaps  behold 

u  when  there  dawns  a  day 

If  not  on  the  homely  earth, 
Then  yonder,  worlds  away, 

Where  the  strange  and  new  have  birth, 
And  power  comes  full  in  play." 

This  occupation  of  discovery  is  per- 
haps not  for  all;  it  is  for  the  young, 
and  for  those  who  are  young  at  heart. 
Peter  Pan  remarked  naively,  as  the 
waters  of  the  lagoon  crept  up  his  little 
rock  and  threatened  to  sweep  him 
away, "  To  die  will  be  an  awfully  big 
adventure."  The  words  came  naturally 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

to  the  lips  of  a  friend  of  Peter  Pan, 
Charles  Frohman,  on  that  fateful  May 
afternoon  when  he  stood  calmly  on  the 
sinking  deck  of  the  doomed  Lusitania. 
"  Why  fear  death  ? "  he  said  to  a  young 
actress  who  stood  beside  him.  "  It  is 
the  most  beautiful  adventure  of  life." 
To  him,  the  man  of  large  enterprise, 
the  friend  of  actors,  himself  an  actor  at 
heart,  the  moment  had  thrilling  dra- 
matic interest.  It  was  what  theatrical 
people  call  "a  good  curtain."  A  "good 
curtain "  is  an  ending  for  one  act  that 
leaves  the  spectator  stirred  by  its  ade- 
quate climax,  but  eager  for  the  begin- 
ning of  the  next  act.  Charles  Froh- 
man's  particular  work  and  play  in  this 
life  had  been  to  discover  genius.  It 
was  his  profession  to  discover  a  girl 
and  make  out  of  her  a  star.  Some  other 

6s 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

man's  business  is  to  discover  a  star  and 
make  out  of  it  a  friend. 

Here  is  a  chemist  who  will  never  be 
content  until  he  knows  the  whole  truth 
about  the  behavior  of  the  atoms  within 
the  molecule.  One  such  died  not  long 
ago  after  a  long  life  of  more  than  four 
score  years,  mostly  spent  in  college  teach- 
ing ;  and  at  the  end,  as  he  thought  over 
the  quiet  past  and  the  unknown  future, 
he  said  to  those  about  him,  thinking 
perhaps  of  the  students  he  had  been 
used  to  watch  from  his  window  over- 
looking the  campus,  "Tell  them  this 
is  my  commencement  day."  Having 
received  from  the  University  of  Life  its 
last  graduate  degree,  he  proposed  to  be- 
gin a  new  career  of  original  research. 

What  is  the  future  going  to  do  with 
the  restless  traveler,  who  has  crossed 
66 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

all  the  deserts  and  sailed  the  seven 
seas,  yet  hears  like  Kipling's  explorer 
the  call  of  the  unknown  :  — 

"  Something  hidden.    Go  and  find  it.    Go  and 

look  behind  the  ranges  — 
Something  lost  behind  the  ranges.    Lost  and 
waiting  for  you.    Go  I  " 

One  cannot  help  asking  in  what  new 
fields  of  celestial  romance  and  en- 
deavor such  pioneering  spirits  will  con- 
tinue their  great  adventure.  Stevenson 
has  given  us  in  the  "Requiem"  his 
thought  of  the  ultimate  content:  — 

"  Home  is  the  sailor,  home  from  sea, 
And  the  hunter  home  from  the  hill." 

That  is  a  beautiful  thought  for  all 
whose  wandering  has  been  only  exile. 
Stevenson  was  a  landsman  at  heart,  and 
it  is  well  that  he  wanders  no  more. 
But  many  of  the  old  vikings  preferred 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

the  sea-burial  to  the  cairn  upon  the  hill. 
Captain  Scott  sleeps  better  beneath  the 
frozen  ground  of  his  Antarctic  new- 
found-land than  he  could  even  in  an 
English  churchyard.  But  upon  what 
strange  seas  shall  his  soul  discover  God 
anew,  as  the  great  stars  circle  forever 
about  his  southern  pole  ?  Where  sails 
Columbus  now?  Raleigh  and  Drake, 
Sir  John  Franklin,  David  Living- 
stone —  what  heavenly  frontiers  have 
they  not  explored?  It  is  vain  to  seek 
for  Ulysses  among  the  home-keeping 
ghosts  of  Hades.  He  is  not  there;  he 
is  still  afloat,  where  Dante  and  Tenny- 
son have  sighted  him,  sailing  toward 
the  setting  sun:  — 

"  It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  will  wash  us  down ; 
It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  Happy  Isles, 
And  see  the  great  Achilles,  whom  we  knew." 

68 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Who  would  condemn  the  Happy 
Warrior  to  the  punishment  of  eternal 
peace,  or  consign  the  untiring  student 
of  the  stars,  the  molecules,  the  crystals, 
or  the  cells,  to  a  paralyzed  heaven  of 
completed  knowledge?  We  are  pretty 
deep  in  the  mazes  of  unprofitable  specu- 
lation when  we  begin  to  inquire  what 
there  will  be  left  to  discover  after  the 
first  surprises  of  the  future  life  are  over. 
But  if  anything  is  sure,  on  the  basis  of 
analogy  and  reasonable  inference,  it  is 
that  heaven  will  not  be  like  the  morning 
after  Christmas,  when  all  the  toys  have 
lost  their  novelty  and  are  laid  away.  We 
hope  and  believe  that  it  will  not  be  like 
the  end  of  the  play,  when  the  curtain 
falls  and  the  garish  house-lights  shutout 
our  vanished  dream.  If  life  be  illusion, 
and  death  the  door  to  a  dull  and  final 
69 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

reality,  some  of  us  would  prefer  to  carry 
the  illusion  with  us  into  oblivion.  Better 
to  fail,  better  to  forget,  than  suddenly  to 
know  all  and  never  to  learn  any  more. 
One  would  rather  watch  forever  beside 
the  Sphinx  amid  the  desert  sands  than 
to  be  told  the  answer  to  her  riddle,  if 
that  answer  explained  everything.  For 
man  is  a  question  rather  than  an  answer; 
and  his  immortality  must  be  something 
more  than  a  reply. 

One  sometimes  thinks  we  know  too 
much  rather  than  too  little  here;  the 
wisest  of  men  set  a  child  in  the  midst  of 
his  disciples.  Perhaps  it  is  because  we 
know  too  much —  too  much  that  is  only 
half  true,  or  not  true  at  all,  that  we  spend 
our  years  as  a  tale  that  is  told.  Life 
grows  dreary  because  it  grows  uninter- 
esting. We  have  had  our  look  behind 
70 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

the  scenes,  and  tire  of  the  play  because 
we  cannot  forget  the  painted  canvas  and 
the  ropes.  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  the 
Greeks  were  not  right  about  it  when 
they  invented  Lethe,  the  waters  of  for- 
getfulness.  Perhaps  a  cool  bath  of  ob- 
livion for  the  worldly-wise,  the  disil- 
lusioned, the  blase*,  would  not  be  a  bad 
thing  after  all. 

But  however  that  maybe,  surely  those 
who  have  never  lost  their  eager  curios- 
ity, never  have  ceased  to  be  seekers 
after  the  unknown,  may  go  right  on  dis- 
covering truth  the  moment  they  enter 
the  Elysian  Fields.  And  it  will  take  a 
long  time  to  discover  it  all.  Tennyson 
may  study  his  "crannied  flower"  long 
and  earnestly  before  he  fully  knows 
"what  God  and  man  is."  William  Blake 
as  a  mortal  may  "  see  the  world  in  a 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

grain  of  sand,  and  a  heaven  in  a  wild 
flower."  But  Blake  the  immortal  will 
hardly  even  yet  "  hold  infinity  in  the 
palm  of  his  hand,  and  eternity  in  an 
hour."  Children  in  heaven  as  on  earth 
will  probably  go  on  searching  for  the 
end  of  the  rainbow.  We  have  to  grow 
up  to  discover  the  beautiful  fact  that  the 
rainbow  has  no  end. 

If  heaven  does  not  provide  tasks  for 
our  explorers,  our  scientists,  our  engi- 
neers, our  captains  of  industry,  some  of 
them  at  least  will  set  to  work  to  make 
work.  They  will  invent  something  use- 
ful to  do.  Dante  had  no  occupation  for 
the  saints  in  Paradise  more  exciting 
than  debates  about  scholastic  theology 
with  mediaeval  ecclesiastics.  But  talk 
is  not  work;  it  can  hardly  be  called  dis- 
covery, though  the  renewal  of  earthly 
72 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

acquaintance  and  the  making  of  new 
friends  may,  as  hereinafter  suggested,  be 
among  the  principal  occupations  of  the 
future  life.  What  discoveries  in  the  realm 
of  what  we  call  nature  that  future  may 
permit,  what  activities  in  the  investiga- 
tion and  control  of  force,  we  cannot  even 
conjecture. 


X 

THE  art  of  the  ultimate  future  is  for 
artists  to  imagine.  Browning  has  shown 
us  Abt  Vogler  dreaming  of  the  music 
of  the  future.  Kipling  has  given  us  his 
quaint  vision  of  that  spacious  studio 
where  all  the  immortal  painters  of  the 
world's  academies  shall  gather  to  paint 
what  they  choose  in  the  way  they 
like. 

"  Those  that  were  good  shall  be  happy :  they 

shall  sit  in  a  golden  chair ; 
They  shall  splash  at  a  ten-league  canvas  with 

brushes  of  comet's  hair ; 
They  shall  find  real  saints  to  draw  from  — 

Magdalene,  Peter,  and  Paul ; 
They  shall  work  for  an  age  at  a  sitting,  and 

never  be  tired  at  all. 

74 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

"  And  only  the  Master  shall  praise  us,  and  only 

the  Master  shall  blame  ; 
And  no  one  shall  work  for  money,  and  no  one 

shall  work  for  fame. 
But  each,  for  the  joy  of  the  working,  and  each, 

in  his  separate  star, 
Shall  draw  the  Thing  as  he  sees  It,  for  the 

God  of  Things  as  They  are."  • 

Thus  we  may  at  least  conceive  that 
those  who  have  tried  here  to  represent 
beauty  will  try  there  to  work  with  beauty 
itself.  The  musician  may  work  with  har- 
monies impossible  for  the  imperfect  in- 
struments of  this  world.  'The  artist  may 
draw  as  with  the  cunning  finger  of  the 
frost,  and  paint  with  the  very  colors  of 
the  sunset.  There  will  perhaps  be  less 
copying  and  more  creating.  The  poet 
will  become  once  more,  as  he  was  when 
Greece  was  young,  the  "maker."  St. 
James  tells  his  early  Christian  readers 
75 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

that  they  are  to  be  "poets  of  the  Logos," 
or,  as  we  more  commonly  hear  it, "  doers 
of  the  word,  not  hearers  only."  Dead 
poets  who  have  done  with  words  may 
help  more  beautifully,  more  subtly  than 
others  to  reveal  that  Word  which  was 
in  the  beginning.  Shelley  wrote  of  the 
vanished  spirit  of  John  Keats, — 

' '  He  is  a  portion  of  that  loveliness 
Which  once  he  made  more  lovely." 

Celestial  architecture  figures  largely 
in  the  quaint  visions  of  the  Hebrew 
Ezekiel  and  the  Christian  John;  but 
one  fancies  they  hardly  realized  that 
souls  need  neither  roofs  nor  walls. 
Architecture  is  the  art  of  transfiguring 
the  human  need  for  shelter.  In  the  fu- 
ture, like  all  other  arts,  it  must  become 
pure  symbolism.  And  this  will  be  no 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

loss  but  a  gain.  For  psychology  teaches 
us  that  not  in  the  external  world  but 
within  the  mind  are  built  all  those 
myriad  forms  of  beaut}7,  in  form  and 
light  and  color  and  sound,  of  which  our 
earthly  arts  give  us  back  but  faint  re- 
flections. Beauty  has  its  objective  basis 
in  the  symmetries  of  nature,  as  music 
has  its  basis  in  the  mathematical  ratios 
of  tones;  but  the  symmetries  and  the 
ratios  themselves  are  subjectively  per- 
ceived as  well  as  enjoyed.  When  the 
time  comes  that  the  soul  works  alto- 
gether in  the  realm  of  the  ideal,  unham- 
pered by  poor  materials  and  imperfect 
tools,  the  arts,  which  have  so  long  sub- 
limely baffled  man,  will  at  last  express 
him  and  reveal  his  Maker. 

Imagination  pauses  here,  but  it  does 
not  admit  the  possibility  of  a  spiritual 

77 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

world  in  which  the  master  spirits  be- 
come the  slaves  of  an  eternal  paralyz- 
ing calm.  "  What 's  come  to  perfection 
perishes."  There  is  a  touching  tribute 
of  Matthew  Arnold  to  his  father,  Thomas 
Arnold  of  Rugby,  in  the  lines  enti- 
tled "  Rugby  Chapel."  He  voices  this 
thought,  that  there  are  souls  that  can- 
not be  happy  without  endeavor: — ^ 

"  O  strong  soul,  by  what  shore 
Tarriest  thou  now  ?  For  that  force, 
Surely,  has  not  been  left  vain ! 
Somewhere,  surely,  afar, 
In  the  sounding  labor-house  vast 
Of  being,  is  practised  that  strength, 
Zealous,  beneficent,  firm."4 


XI 

ON  the  other  hand,  discovery  is  not  the 
usual  occupation  of  mankind.  Abound- 
ing energy  that  would  be  punished  by 
idleness  is  not  so  common  that  we  can 
shape  our  thought  of  the  future  prima- 
rily by  it.  Not  all  the  good  men  love 
work  so  much  that  they  do  not  gladly 
lay  them  down  to  sleep.  There  comes 
a  time  when  all  we  want  is  just  to  get 
home  and  get  to  bed.  There  is  a  deep 
beauty  in  the  solemn  words  of  the  an- 
cient requiem, 

"  Eternal  rest  give  unto  them,  O  Lord, 
And  may  perpetual  light  shine  ever  on  them." 

How  many  folded  hands  have  we  all 
seen  in  our  time  that  seemed  content 
79 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

to  be  folded  forever;  how  many  fast 
closed  eyes  that  seemed  to  have  seen 
enough.  Rest,  the  long  rest  of  God's 
long  Sabbath,  seemed  all  that  they  could 
have  wished.  As  the  Earl  of  Kent  said 
of  the  dying  Lear, — 

"  O  let  him  pass !  He  hates  him 
That  would  upon  the  rack  of  this  tough  world 
Stretch  him  out  longer." 

When  we  think  of  the  young  and  the 
daring,  whose  great  adventure  has  been 
transferred  to  other  and  broader  fields, 
we  are  not  to  forget  the  weary  who 
wait  for  release  "as  a  servant  that  ear- 
nestly desireth  the  shadow."  Browning, 
in  his  "Old  Pictures  in  Florence,"  voices 
this  hesitation  between  a  heaven  of 
vaster  enterprise  and  a  heaven  of  re- 
pose:— 


So 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

•'  There's  a  fancy  some  lean  to  and  others  hate — 

That,  when  this  life  is  ended,  begins 
New  work  for  the  soul  in  another  state, 
Where  it  strives  and  gets  weary,  loses  and 

wins; 
Where  the  strong  and  the  weak,  this  world's 

congeries, 

Repeat  in  large  what  they  practised  in  small, 
Through  life  after  life  in  unlimited  series ; 
Only  the  scale's  to  be  changed,  that's  all. 

"  Yet  I  hardly  know.  When  a  soul  has  seen 
By  the  means  of  Evil  that  Good  is  best, 
And,    through   earth  and   its   noise,  what   is 

heaven's  serene,  — 
When  our  faith  in  the  same  has  stood  the 

test  — 
Why,  the  child  grown  man,  you  burn  the  rod, 

The  uses  of  labor  are  surely  done ; 
There  remaineth  a  rest  for  the  people  of  God : 
And  I  have  had  troubles  enough,  for  one." 

This  is  exceptional  rather  than  char- 
acteristic in  Browning,  who  is  the  poet 
of  the  active  heaven ;  but  many  other 
81 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

poets  have  presented  to  us  the  contrast 
between  the  strenuous  life  of  this  world 
and  the  future  life  of  surcease.  Let  us 
face  life  cheerfully,  even  as  a  long  and 
unrewarding  task,  they  say,  if  only  we 
may  view  death  as  a  long  repose.  Chris- 
tina Rossetti,  for  example,  gives  utter- 
ance in  lines  of  haunting  beauty  to  this 
promise  of  the  rest  that  comes  with  the 
shadow:  — 

"  Does  the  road  wind  up-hill  all  the  way? 

Yes,  to  the  very  end. 
^Will  the  day's  journey  take  the  whole  long 

day? 
From  morn  to  night,  my  friend. 

"  But  is  there  for  the  night  a  resting-place? 

A  roof  for  when  the  slow,  dark  hours  begin. 
May  not  the  darkness  hide  it  from  my  face  ? 
You  cannot  miss  that  inn. 

"  Shall  I  meet  other  wayfarers  at  night? 
Those  who  have  gone  before. 

82 


LIVING    FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Then  must  I  knock,  or  call  when  just  in  sight? 
They  will  not  keep  you  standing  at  that 
door. 

"  Shall  I  find  comfort,  travel-sore  and  weak? 

Of  labor  you  shall  find  the  sum. 
Will  there  be  beds  for  me  and  all  who  seek? 
Yea,  beds  for  all  who  come." 

While,  therefore,  we  have  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  future  life  will  be  in 
some  degree  active,  at  least  for  those 
for  whom  activity  is  the  highest  good, 
we  have  no  need  to  fear  the  forcing  of 
labor  upon  the  weary,  or  of  discovery 
and  adventure  upon  the  perplexed  and 
bewildered  soul.  For  the  vast  majority 
of  mankind,  work  in  this  world  means 
a  dull  routine  in  which  the  soul  can 
have  little  share;  and  for  them  it  is  not 
easy  to  conceive  of  an  active  future 
which  can  be  anything  but  a  perpetua- 
83 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

tion  of  irksome  toil.  All  such  may  rest 
in  the  conviction  that  the  future  will 
provide  the  highest  good  for  each  and 
all.  "  He  giveth  unto  his  beloved  sleep." 


XII 

ARISING  naturally  out  of  the  thought 
of  the  future  as  giving  unbounded  op- 
portunities for  discovery  comes  the  oc- 
cupation of  discovering  old  friends,  of 
renewing  the  severed  ties  of  earthly 
love  and  friendship,  and  of  learning  to 
know  one  another  better  than  earthly 
barriers  permit.  This  is  what  most  of 
us  think  of  first  when  our  minds  turn 
with  an  increasing  sense  of  nearness  to 
the  place  where  so  many  that  were 
closest  to  us  have  preceded  us.  It  was 
not  mentioned  first,  because  it  seemed 
better  to  begin  by  trying  to  get  a  cer- 
tain sense  of  reality  and  variety  into  our 
thought  of  the  future  before  turning  to 
this  purely  personal  interest.  But  it 

85 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

comes  up  now,  and  at  once  we  are  con- 
fronted by  many  perplexities. 

We  must  assume  some  kind  and  de- 
gree of  recognition  as  a  necessary  infer- 
ence from  our  starting-point,  personal 
immortality.  Persons  cannot  perma- 
nently live  alone;  if  they  do,  they  cease 
to  be  in  the  largest  sense  persons.  We 
are  social  beings.  Life  as  we  know  it  is 
so  intricate,  so  complex  an  interweaving 
of  human  destinies,  that  so  far  as  we 
can  conceive,  the  threads  can  never  be 
wholly  disentangled. 

A  future  world  in  which  you  and  I 
are  individually  conscious  of  ourselves 
and  of  God,  but  just  as  unconscious  as 
we  are  now  of  the  presence  all  around 
us  of  invisible  spiritual  beings,  would 
hardly  be  personal  immortality.  For 
personality  requires  other  persons  in 
86 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

order  to  realize  and  to  express  itself; 
and  life,  of  which  immortality  is  only  the 
superlative  degree,  means  adjustment 
to  environment.  The  raising  of  barriers 
between  personalities  is  in  so  far  a  limi- 
tation which,  if  made  absolute,  as  for 
example  by  insanity,  brings  the  paraly- 
sis, the  apparent  negation,  of  what  we 
call  the  person.  We  say  of  such  an  un- 
fortunate, "  He  is  not  himself."  Personal 
immortality,  then,  must  carry  with  it, 
not  a  multiplication  but  a  removal  of 
barriers.  Some  have  thought  of  heaven 
as  the  world  where  virtue  is  instantly 
recognized  by  any  one  that  sees  it. 
"Then  shall  I  know  even  as  also  I  am 
known." 

Apparently  some  kind  of  mutual  rec- 
ognition of  persons  in  a  spiritual  world 
is  a  necessary  corollary  of  personal  im- 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

mortality.  But  it  is  a  very  different  ques- 
tion whether  we  shall  find  it  any  easier 
to  recognize  those  we  have  known  in 
the  earthly  life  than  to  learn  to  know 
the  passing  stranger.  What  will  be  the 
signs  by  which  soul  greets  soul  ?  Do 
you  know  your  friend  so  well  that  if  you 
could  read  his  heart  you  would  know 
him  without  the  familiar  features,  the 
friendly  smile,  the  long-remembered 
voice?  There  are  those  who  suppose, 
like  the  spiritualists,  that  we  shall  some- 
how recognize  our  loved  ones  in  the 
future  world  by  a  kind  of  retained  vis- 
ual image  of  their  personal  appearance, 
which  will  remain  associated  with  the 
spirit  after  its  departure  from  the  body. 
Why  should  we  pause  upon  a  point  so 
entirely  beyond  even  possible  conjec- 
ture? You  think  of  your  friend  as  you 
88 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

last  saw  him,  years  before  he  died,  and 
perhaps  expect  to  know  him  by  a  sort 
of  spiritual  image  of  a  man  in  the  vigor 
of  youth.  But  there  are  others  for  whom 
the  image  stamped  upon  memory  is  the 
lovely  serenity  of  declining  years,  the 
whitening  hair,  the  deeply  lined  face, 
the  failing  strength.  It  was  so  they  knew 
him,  so  they  loved  him,  so  only  that 
they  would  recognize  him  if  spirits  are 
to  be  known  by  such  signs. 

These  speculations  raise  at  once  so 
many  incongruous  and  absurd  conse- 
quences that  the  healthy  mind  is  apt  to 
brush  aside  the  whole  inquiry  as  inane. 
Let  us  pass  on,  with  the  remark  that  if 
there  be  any  future  life,  the  lives  that 
were  really  linked  here  by  anything  more 
than  the  accidents  of  temporary  associ- 
ation will  somehow  find  each  other  out. 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

I  do  not  feel  sure  they  will  all  be 
discovered  easily.  One  can  conceive 
of  many  a  half-formed  soul  hurried  into 
eternity  and  searching  long  for  one  whose 
real  life  had  been  infinitely  distant  from 
his  own,  though  they  had  passed  their 
years  side  by  side.  When  Alcestis  went 
for  the  second  and  last  time  to  wander 
like  some  white  vestal  virgin  in  the  gar- 
dens of  Proserpine,  and  there  was  no 
Hercules  to  bring  her  back,  Admetus 
must  have  been  a  long  time  finding  her. 
He  may  not  have  known  her  when  they 
passed;  but  she  would  have  known  him, 
and  taken  pity  on  him.  Since  1914  there 
must  have  been  many  a  rough  Tommy 
Atkins,  many  a  French  chasseur,  many 
a  German  gunner,  whose  simple,  sinful, 
loyal  soul  has  risen  suddenly  from  the 
screaming,  cursing  earth  to  the  land 
90 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

where  all  good  soldiers  go,  who  will 
yet  be  a  long  time  finding  his  mother, 
his  sweetheart,  when  they  come.  Per- 
haps the  church  knew  very  well  what 
it  was  about  when  it  introduced  the 
doctrine  of  purgatory. 

Indeed,  one  wonders  whether  any  but 
the  closest  and  most  spiritual  ties,  ties 
rare  or  unknown  in  many  lives  that  are 
lived  out  here  both  in  cottage  and  in 
mansion,  can  bridge  the  gulf  that  parts 
us  all.  For,  while  we  like  to  talk  about 
the  coming  removal  of  barriers,  and  the 
probability  of  some  kind  of  future  rec- 
ognition, there  is  no  use  in  denying  that 
there  are  mysterious  and  unfathomable 
spaces  between  soul  and  soul.  They  are 
bridged  here — or  seem  to  be  —  by  the 
easy  and  fallacious  intimacies  of  com- 
mon life.  To  have  sat  side  by  side,  to 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

have  walked  together,  to  have  been 
sheltered  by  the  same  roof,  fed  from  the 
same  table,  warmed  by  the  same  fire 
—  these  seem  more  than  they  are.  Fel- 
lowship is  something  more  than  to  lodge 
in  the  same  hotel.  To  suppose  that  all 
who  have  been  associated  here  by  the 
ties  of  business  or  of  kinship  will  meet 
in  eternity  would  be  as  foolish  as  to  sup- 
pose that  all  the  students  who  now  sit 
together  in  the  classroom  will  find  one 
another  congenial  twenty  years  after 
graduation. 

The  real  ties  may  be  those  deep  nat- 
ural affinities  that  figure  in  poetry  and 
romance.  Quite  as  often  they  are  the 
growth  of  long  years  of  mutual  sacri- 
fice and  communion,  of  deliberate  and 
sometimes  difficult  sharing  and  helping, 
of  groundless  hopes  and  useless  fears. 
92 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

They  are  knit  together  by  the  long  chain 
of  joys  and  sorrows,  beginnings  and  ends. 
They  begin  in  some  common  thrill  at 
dawn,  some  hand  in  hand  at  sunset;  and 
they  lead  to  twilight  together,  and  dark- 
ness severed  only  by  those  dreams  which 
cannot  be  told.  Such  comrades,  though 
their  paths  seem  always  a  little  apart, 
come  somehow  to  be  one  at  last;  for 
parallel  lines  meet  at  infinity. 

Recognition  in  the  future  life  will 
not  be  a  cheap,  easy  prologue  to  heaven. 
It  will  not  be  over  in  an  hour,  or  an 
age.  There  will  be  many  a  quest 
wherein  he  who  started  gayly  forth  to 
find  his  lady  will  wander  long  before 
he  finds  what  he  had  not  sought  —  the 
Holy  Grail,  whereof  she  is  now  a  hum- 
ble minister.  You  thought  you  knew 
your  brother,  your  business  partner, 

93 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

your  college  mate,  and  look  for  him 
among  the  unready  crowd  about  the 
gates;  but  when  you  find  him,  he  is 
with  one  so  holy  that  you  see  only  the 
shining  of  his  face. 

And  what  of  those  who  die  in  youth  ? 
Do  they  grow  up  in  heaven  ?  It  is 
hard  to  think  there  are  no  children 
there,  and  most  of  us  refuse  to  believe 
it.  More  likely  many  of  those  who  en- 
tered that  unseen  world  in  early  life 
remain  always  children,  children  in 
happy  heart  and  simple  faith,  though 
growing  in  wisdom  and  in  grace.  Shall 
we  see  them  as  they  were,  or  as  they 
might  have  been?  Are  the  parents  to 
expect  a  welcome  from  one  who  has 
still  his  proud  little  secrets  to  confide, 
his  shy  and  adorable  evasions  of  just 
praise,  his  delight  in  being  taken  for 

94 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

granted  as  a  comrade?  Or  will  there 
be  a  wise  man-soul  waiting  there,  with 
fulfillment  written  where  promise  was 
before  ?  Is  the  little  one  that  vanished 
with  the  violets  to  be  still  the  eager 
child  of  spring,  or  will  she  walk  sedately 
and  be  queen  of  the  summer?  Who 
knows?  And  who  will  not  know  soon? 


XIII 

RECOGNITION  in  the  future  can  hardly 
be  limited  to  those  spirits  whom  we 
have  chanced  to  be  acquainted  with 
here.  A  fascinating  subject  of  fanciful 
speculation  in  all  ages  has  been  the  pos- 
sibility of  knowing  and  learning  from 
the  great  dead  of  all  the  past.  I  need 
only  refer  you  to  the  "Divine  Comedy" 
for  innumerable  illustrations  of  it.  Peter, 
on  the  mount  of  transfiguration,  behold- 
ing the  spirits  of  Moses  and  Elijah 
talking  with  his  Master,  eagerly  pro- 
posed a  longer  stay;  he  would  gladly 
have  talked  a  while  himself  with  those 
ancient  worthies,  for  they  had  seen  a 
good  deal  of  life  in  their  day.  Every 
one  of  us  has  his  heroes  in  history,  in 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

literature,  in  the  long  honor  roll  of 
sages  and  martyrs  and  saints.  If  you 
were  offered  the  chance  to  choose  just 
five  names  out  of  all  the  good  and  the 
wise  whose  absent  souls  have  been 
your  guides,  through  those  golden 
words  and  deeds  which  they  have  left 
behind,  and  to  talk  with  each  but  a 
single  hour,  would  not  that  hour  be 
worth  a  year  of  life?  It  is  a  trite  say- 
ing that  as  a  rule  those  who  go  as 
strangers  to  visit  great  men  in  this 
world  come  away  disappointed.  Emer- 
son explains  this;  he  says:  "The  young 
scholar  fancies  it  happiness  enough  to 
live  with  people  who  can  give  an  inside 
to  the  world;  without  reflecting  that 
they  are  prisoners,  too,  of  their  own 
thought,  and  cannot  apply  themselves 
to  yours." 

97 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

The  imperfect  sympathies  and  the 
limited  time  that  make  hero-worship 
at  close  range  a  dangerous  amusement 
in  this  life  can  hardly  survive  in  the 
future.  Here  surely  discovery  as  an 
occupation  for  eternity  will  have  its 
widest  scope.  If  it  should  take  us  un- 
numbered years  really  to  know  the 
hearts  of  those  few  we  have  thought  we 
knew  already,  what  can  be  said  of  the 
prospect  opened  here?  Mankind  will 
never  cease  to  be  interesting,  and  a 
heaven  in  which  there  are  all  kinds  of 
people  can  never  grow  dull.  Ennui  is 
not  to  be  thought  of  in  a  world  where 
Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  and  Mark 
Twain  can  be  just  as  happy  as  St.  Au- 
gustine and  John  Wesley.  Probably  the 
one  sort  may  never  fully  appreciate  the 
other  even  in  heaven,  but  fortunate  no- 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

bodies  like  ourselves  can  enjoy  them 
all.  If  one  is  ever  tempted  to  think  that 
we  must  some  day  get  to  an  end  of  our 
resources,  it  is  pleasant  to  remember 
that  all  the  wisdom,  all  the  wit,  all  the 
beauty  and  bravery  of  this  world,  as 
well  as  all  its  saintliness,  must  go  on 
growing  and  shining  forever  if  the  souls 
of  men  do  really  live  beyond  the  grave. 
(And  if  they  do  not,  nothing  matters 
after  all,  for  we  shall  never  know  it.) 


XIV 

ANOTHER  occupation  of  the  future 
may  be  the  education  of  newly  risen 
souls.  Have  you  ever  tried  to  imagine 
what  it  must  mean,  on  the  hypothesis 
of  immortality,  that  during  the  great 
war  millions  of  young  men  have  been 
hurried  out  of  this  world  into  the  pres- 
ence of  God?  They  were  without  any 
of  that  discipline  of  the  spirit  that  life 
itself  unfailingly  imparts.  Many  of  them 
had  never  learned,  either  by  victory  or 
by  defeat,  how  really  to  be  men,  save 
in  such  ways  as  legs  and  arms  and 
brains  can  be  called  men,  until  they  are 
shot  to  pieces.  Flesh  they  knew,  and 
loved  it,  but  not  too  well;  blood  they 
knew,  and  spilled  it — for  a  flag;  but 
100 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

spirit  they  knew  not,  and  spirit  they  are 
now,  or  nothing.  If  anything  is  left  of 
those  boys  except  a  vast  decay,  it  must 
be  a  vast  ignorance,  a  blank  dismay,  an 
unformed  hope,  an  unanswered  ques- 
tion. Who  is  to  teach  those  murdered 
soldiers,  whose  only  memorial  now  is 
a  helmet  on  a  rude  cross  ?  Who  is  to 
show  them  how  the  great  war  can  have 
brought  them  into  a  great  but  unknown 
peace? 

Are  there  not  guides  that  wait  above 
the  fields  of  France  ?  Has  God  no  scouts, 
no  sentries  posted  at  his  frontiers  ?  Per- 
haps the  barren  plains  this  side  of  the 
great  divide  are  paced  by  the  lonely 
horsemen  of  the  border  patrol.  They 
know  no  more  of  heaven  than  just  to 
give  the  first  salute,  and  to  point  out 
the  road  across  the  valley  of  the  shadow. 
101 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

There  is  among  them  a  Roman  centu- 
rion who  watched  the  darkness  cover 
Calvary.  There  are  swarthy  troopers 
of  Custer's  band  and  Sheridan's  brigade. 
There  are  the  leaders  of  lost  causes, 
captains  of  many  a  forlorn  hope,  and  the 
forgotten  soldiers  of  many  wars.  They 
have  been  saved  so  as  by  fire;  and  their 
souls  still  wait,  through  all  this  desolating 
celestial  peace,  for  one  more  chance  to 
strike  a  blow  for  some  cause  which 
they  deepty  love,  and  dimly  understand. 
And  meanwhile,  they  can  train  the  raw 
recruits  who  are  ever  rushing  forth  from 
the  cannon  smoke  and  the  horrid  din  of 
battle. 

And  when  we  are  thinking  of  the  edu- 
cation of  new  souls,  what  of  the  chil- 
dren ?  God  will  always  need  some  very 
kind  teachers  in  his  kindergarten,  for 
102 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

there  is  a  new  class  every  day.  Are 
there  not  mothers  waiting  to  meet  all 
the  little  children  that  come  crying  into 
this  world?  And  shall  there  not  be 
mothers  to  meet  those  that  go  so  quietly 
and  trustfully  out  of  it?  There  are  some 
women  in  heaven  that  could  never 
stand  it  to  see  a  lost  child  looking  for 
the  way  home ;  they  would  run  to  take 
his  little  hand  and  lead  him  up  to  God. 
You  don't  have  to  prove  that;  you  know 
it. 

Would  you  not  love  to  stand  there 
watching  for  the  soul  that  needs  you; 
the  weakness  that  needs  your  strength, 
the  weariness  that  needs  your  peace, 
the  apprehension  that  your  fuller  know- 
ledge can  best  remove?  Perhaps  we 
shall  all  be  teachers  in  heaven.  The 
least  learned  of  us  can  somehow  keep 
103 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

a  day  or  two  ahead  of  the  freshman 
class;  and  none  of  our  pupils  will  ever 
forget  us  when  they  have  learned  what 
little  we  can  teach. 


XV 

BY  such  an  imaginative  survey  of 
some  of  the  possible  occupations  of  the 
future  life  we  have  perhaps  been  led  to 
consider  that  life  as  having  more  points 
of  contact  with  the  present  than  we  had 
supposed.  We  have  distinguished  five 
activities  which  seem  not  only  possible 
but  probable  in  a  world  of  immortal 
spirits.  They  are,  first,  silent  influence 
for  good  upon  the  living;  second,  the 
discovery  of  new  truth  and  new  beauty 
in  the  universe  of  which  heaven  is  only 
the  spiritual  aspect' — the  study  of  celes- 
tial philosophy  and  science  and  art,  pur- 
sued for  the  sheer  joy  of  knowing  and 
of  doing,  by  those  to  whom  learning  or 
action  is  indispensable  to  full  self-realiz- 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

ation;  third,  the  renewal  of  earthly  ties 
of  love  andf  riendship ;  fourth,  the  making 
of  new  friends;  and  fifth,  the  education  of 
novices.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  add 
further  illustrations  of  the  general  prop- 
osition that  the  future  life  is  a  life  of 
progress,  of  change,  of  growth,  of  multi- 
plying contacts  and  sympathies  with  the 
infinite  world  of  the  human  as  well  as 
of  the  divine. 

That  such  inherently  spiritual  activi- 
ties as  have  been  vaguely  sketched  can 
be  really  separated  from  the  Christian 
view  of  the  future  life  is  obviously  im- 
possible. But  by  avoiding  the  biblical 
terminology,  by  considering  what  one 
may  perhaps  inaccurately  call  the  secu- 
lar aspects  of  immortality,  we  gain  per- 
haps a  certain  freshness  in  the  point  of 
view,  which  may  appeal  to  some  for 
1 06 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

whom  matters  of  faith  are  quite  beyond 
the  realm  of  the  imagination.  We  may 
even  keep  this  unusual  attitude  a  little 
longer,  while  we  inquire  what  the  conse- 
quences of  such  speculations  are  for  our 
present  life. 

Our  very  title  is  a  challenge.  It  is 
meant  to  be  a  challenge.  Living  for  the 
future  —  with  what  scorn  the  practical 
man  is  apt  to  receive  such  a  suggestion, 
when  he  comprehends  that  the  future 
we  are  talking  about  is  the  future  beyond 
the  grave.  What  we  need,  he  tells  us, 
is  more  living  for  the  present,  or  for  the 
immediate  future,  and  then  the  distant 
future  will  take  care  of  itself.  If  there  is 
to  be  any  living  for  the  future,  he  adds, 
it  ought  to  be  mostly  that  far-sighted 
morality  which  may  be  described  as 
living  for  the  next  generation.  We  are 
107 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

sure  to  be  accused  of  having  reached, 
by  a  different  path  from  that  of  the  older 
theologians,  an  other- worldliness  which 
is  not  only  useless  but  even  harmful  to 
social  progress. 

There  is  enough  truth  in  the  criticism 
to  keep  us  from  any  tendency  toward 
over-emphasis  of  a  side  of  truth  which 
most  of  the  world  altogether  neglects. 
It  is  true  that  to  allow  one's  mind  to 
dwell  over  much  on  curious  specula- 
tions about  the  nature  of  immortality  is 
likely  to  encourage  indifference  to  the 
reality  and  the  importance  of  those  bat- 
tles which  we  ought  now  to  wage  for 
the  morality,  the  justice,  the  human 
brotherhood  of  the  present  world.  Our 
business  just  now  is  to  play  the  game, 
while  we  have  a  chance.  Browning  has 
given  us,  in  his  "  Epistle  of  Karshish  " 
1 08 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

concerning  Lazarus  of  Bethany,  a  vivid 
picture  of  the  effect  upon  the  human 
mind  of  an  unveiled  vision  of  eternity; 
the  daze,  the  lack  of  perspective,  the 
dreamy  and  mystical  outlook  on  a  ma- 
terial world  no  longer  regarded  as  su- 
premely important:  — 

*'  Heaven  opened  to  a  soul  while  yet  on  earth, 
Earth  forced  on  a  soul's  use  while  seeing  , 
heaven." 

The  poems  of  William  Blake  and  of 
Emily  Dickinson  are  a  sufficient  illustra- 
tion both  of  the  strange,  unearthly  beauty 
of  a  life  taken  possession  of  by  the  power 
of  the  world  to  come,  and  of  the  utter 
inability  of  such  a  life  to  enter  into  the 
struggles  of  its  own  generation.  Poets 
and  prophets  may  be  pardoned  if  some- 
times they  see  the  goal  so  clearly  that 
they  neglect  the  means;  but  the  rest  of 
109 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

mankind  will  do  well  to  remember  that 
a  little  duty  done  is  better  than  a  great 
ideal  unapproached.  "  Whatsoever  thy 
handfindeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy  might" 
is  good  advice  for  this  world,  though  it 
is  the  advice  of  an  agnostic  Hebrew 
philosopher  who  had  no  place  in  his 
philosophy  for  the  ethics  of  immor- 
tality. Living  for  the  present,  working 
for  proximate  ends,  seeking  to  raise  the 
general  level  of  human  welfare  and  hap- 
piness an  inch  or  two  by  practicable 
means,  is  rightly  esteemed  by  the  ma- 
jority of  thoughtful  men  to  be  the  best 
way  for  society  to  prepare  for  whatever 
heaven  may  some  day  be  realized  on 
earth. 


XVI 

BUT  when  all  that  is  said,  we  have  a 
haunting  consciousness  thatwhat  is  true 
for  society  is  not  always  enough  to  sat- 
isfy the  individual  heart.  Your  reform 
may  be  worked  out  twenty,  thirty,  forty 
years  from  now,  but  where  shall  you  be 
then  ?  Your  scheme  for  the  uplifting  of 
the  race  may  some  day  triumph,  but 
what  is  your  own  outlook  into  that  in- 
visible world  where  too  many  of  the 
brightest  and  best  have  already  gone 
before  their  time? 

The  philosophy  of  living  for  the  pres- 
ent, in  the  higher  and  more  unselfish 
sense,  seems  entirely  adequate  in  the 
case  of  those  fortunate  men  and  women 
who  live  out  the  full  span  of  human  life, 
in 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

and  fill  it  with  happy  and  successful  and 
enduring  labor  for  others.  But  there  are 
more  chances  of  failure  than  of  success 
for  the  individual  in  his  attempts  to  con- 
tribute to  social  progress.  A  wrong  con- 
ception of  the  problem,  misguided  effort, 
external  hindrances,  a  premature  or  a 
belated  start,  a  lack  of  resources,  the 
interruptions  due  to  physical  limitations, 
the  untimely  end  of  a  long,  unequal 
struggle  —  these  make  up  the  history  of 
many  a  noble  and  (as  we  say)  ineffec- 
tive life.  As  we  grow  older,  and  per- 
ceive in  how  small  a  proportion  of  the 
worthier  lives  about  us  it  can  be  said 
that  "the  end  crowns  the  work,"  we  are 
moved,  not  to  pessimism,  but  to  a  more 
transcendent  faith;  a  faith  that  climbs 
over  failure  and  sees  the  ultimate  suc- 
cess, not  alone  for  the  many,  but  for 
112 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

the  very  one  who  tried  and  seemed  to 
fail. 

The  fact  is,  that  none  of  us  is  really 
satisfied,  when  we  first  realize  that  our 
own  larger  life-plan  is  sure  to  fail,  by  the 
assurance  that  some  one  else  in  distant 
years  will  achieve  what  we  attempted, 
that  the  thing  itself  will  somehow  be 
brought  to  pass.  That  is  all  right  for 
society,  but  not  all  right  for  us;  not 
enough  to  satisfy  us  as  a  final  and  ade- 
quate motive  for  a  victorious  life.  The 
physician  who  gives  his  life  as  a  sacrifice 
to  demonstrate  the  cause  of  a  mysteri- 
ous disease,  or  to  help  find  a  remedy  for 
it,  is  hailed  as  a  true  martyr  of  science; 
he  has  his  reward.  But  what  of  that 
much  larger  number  who  take  equal 
risks  and  meet  an  equally  untimely  end 
through  some  stupid  accident,  with  no 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

useful  result  that  either  they  or  society 
can  perceive?  They  need  immortality 
to  justify  life;  they  need  the  future  to 
explain  the  present. 

Living  for  the  future  is  no  coward's 
philosophy.  It  is  not  an  ingenious  and 
pious  scheme  for  evading  present  duty, 
or  explaining  away  one's  failures.  Rather 
is  it  the  inspiration  of  the  weak,  the 
crown  and  culmination  of  the  strong 
man's  race.  The  very  mention  of  it 
brings  the  sting  of  shame  to  the  indo- 
lent and  selfish,  of  fear  to  the  sensual. 
Even  those  who  see  most  clearly  and 
grasp  most  eagerly  the  splendid  oppor- 
tunities of  the  present  come  sooner  or 
later  to  the  point  where  they  too  realize 
that  they  have  all  along  been  living  for 
the  future,  and  have  missed  something 
because  they  did  not  know  it  before. 
114 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

No,  we  cannot  escape  the  lure  of  eter- 
nity. We  cannot  shut  out  its  all  too 
dazzling  light.  It  flashes  upon  us  in  some 
sudden  splendor  of  the  morning.  It  sets 
us  dreaming  in  broad  daylight.  Shelley, 
in  his  "Adonais,"  has  told  us  how 

"  Life,  like  a  dome  of  many -colored  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity." 

But  there  are  times  when  all  the  glow- 
ing colors  of  the  spectrum,  the  light 
and  the  dark,  the  solemn  and  the  gay, 
are  fused  for  an  instant  by  our  keener 
sense,  and  we  are  aware  of  the  invisible 
sun  beyond.  As  Emily  Dickinson  puts 
it:  — 

44  Our  lives  are  Swiss,  — 

So  still,  so  cool, 
Till,  some  odd  afternoon, 
The  Alps  neglect  their  curtains, 
And  we  look  farther  on. 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

"  Italy  stands  the  other  side, 

While,  like  a  guard  between, 
The  solemn  Alps, 
The  siren  Alps, 

Forever  intervene !  " 

It  was  Browning's  Bishop  Blougram, 
the  worldly  and  half-cynical  ecclesiastic, 
who  told  his  agnostic  companion  why 
we  cannot  permanently  keep  our  doubts 
untouched  by  faith :  — 

44  Just  when  we  are  safest,  there 's  a  sunset- 
touch, 

A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides, 
And  that 's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  nature's  self 
To  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul." 

There  is  a  sense,  then,  in  which  we 

ought  to  live  for  this  future,  about  which 

we  know  nothing  and  hope  everything. 

Of   such   preparedness   as    belongs    to 

116 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

the  distinctly  religious  view  of  life  and 
death,  it  is  unnecessary  here  to  speak; 
just  because  it  is  so  important  that  every 
one  remembers  it  first  when  such  sub- 
jects are  discussed.  There  are  three 
other  ways,  beside  reconciling  our  wills 
with  the  divine,  by  which  we  may  in 
some  degree  learn  how  to  live  without 
a  body.  These  three  ways  are,  to  live 
intensely,  to  live  communicatively,  and 
to  live  helpfully. 


XVII 

FIRST,  because  of  our  probable  future 
we  must  learn  to  live  intensely.  We 
must  pack  every  day  with  personality. 
We  must  give  to  every  task  that  per- 
mits it  as  much  of  ourselves  as  can  be 
put  into  it.  For  in  the  degree  in  which 
we  succeed  in  becoming  most  thor- 
oughly ourselves,  our  best  selves,  in  the 
degree,  that  is  to  say,  in  which  the  gen- 
eral human  stuff  in  us  receives  the  unique 
stamp  of  a  distinctive  personality,  just 
so  far  —  and  perhaps  no  further — we 
begin  to  have  within  us  the  germ  of  a 
possible  personal  immortality. 

It  is  not  every  day  nor  every  week 
that  }7ou  can  be  in  any  large  sense  per- 
sonal. You  go  on  for  weeks,  for  months, 
118 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

sometimes  for  years,  mastering  a  rou- 
tine; and  then  comes  the  moment  when 
either  the  routine  will  master  you,  or 
there  must  be  a  new  start,  a  creative  in- 
stant, "a  flash  of  the  will  that  can." 
You  live  dully,  shallowly,  shabbily, 
apologetically,  through  a  whole  winter; 
and  then  some  fine  day  winter  melts, 
April  shines,  something  stirs  within,  and 
your  soul  has  its  chance.  It  is  perhaps 
the  one  half-hour  in  the  year  when  you 
feel  as  if  you  might  still  begin  to  be 
yourself.  For  part  of  one  golden  after- 
noon your  will  is  free.  For  a  tick  of 
the  clock  you  really  see  things  straight. 
It  is,  for  the  moment,  evident  to  you 
that  your  soul  lives  by  these  rare  intens- 
ities, not  of  mere  sentiment  or  empty 
aspiration,  but  of  deep  resolve  and  im- 
mediate perception  of  truth.  Instead  of 
119 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

regretting  now,  as  you  have  been  used 
to  do,  that  such  moments  are  so  rare, 
and  getting  rarer  every  year,  you  rejoice 
that  they  are  still  so  intense ;  that  life  is 
still  so  rich,  the  world  so  full  of  beauty; 
the  past  so  bright,  the  present  so  alluring, 
the  future  so  full  of  wonder. 

"  And  I  have  felt 

A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man ; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

Now  the  lesson  of  our  study  of  the 

future  is  that  there  is  a  sense  in  which 

what  we  are  at  such  moments  is  the  only 

true  self.  Accordingly  as  we  then  rise 

120 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

or  fall,  so  the  vast  colorless  spaces  of 
ordinary  life  are  elevated  into  necessary 
though  uninteresting  duty,  or  depressed 
into  dull  failure  and  unperceived  decay. 
They  are  the  "hours  of  insight"  in  which 
must  be  willed  those  tasks  which  "  can 
be  through  hours  of  gloom  fulfilled." 

These  moments  of  intensity,  when 
personality  can  be  raised  to  a  higher 
power,  are  seldom  to  be  had  by  our 
seeking.  We  may  indeed  cultivate,  by 
such  means  as  our  particular  form  of  re- 
ligion or  of  philosophy  may  suggest/the 
state  of  mind  in  which  this  temporary 
escape  from  the  prison  of  the  common- 
place seems  possible.  Prayer  accom- 
plishes for  one  what  music  does  for  an- 
other; a  walk  in  the  autumn  woods,  a 
quiet  afternoon  beside  the  sea,  a  long 
talk  before  an  open  fire  —  all  these  may 

121 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

help.  They  have  this  in  common,  that 
they  quiet  the  restless,  imperious  voices 
of  the  petty  concerns  of  life,  and  make 
it  possible  for  us  to  listen  to  wisdom 
and  destiny.  But  for  the  most  part  the 
hours  of  insight  come  and  go  without 
our  calling.  Our  business  is  to  recognize 
them  when  they  do  come,  and  turn  them 
to  account.  This  is  Browning's  doctrine 
of  the  critical  moments  of  life,  as  ex- 
pressed, for  example,  in  these  lines:  — 

"  How  the  world  is  made  for  each  of  us ! 

How  all  we  perceive  and  know  in  it 
Tends  to  some  moment's  product  thus, 

When  a  soul  declares  itself  —  to  wit, 
By  its  fruit  —  the  thing  it  does  !  " 

The  intenser  living  that  can  be  called 

living  for  the  future  is  assuredly  not  that 

glorified  selfishness  of  which  modern 

literature  is  full,  the  intense  desire  and 

122 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

resolve  to  get  what  we  want  regardless 
of  consequences.  A  certain  type  of  con- 
temporary verse  and  fiction  tries  to  throw 
a  glamour  over  that  particularly  obnox- 
ious sort  of  adultery  and  lawlessness  in 
general  that  is  called  "  living  one's  own 
life."  Provided  that  the  hero  or  heroine 
is  able  to  feel  individual  desire  so  in- 
tensely as  to  be  indifferent  to  the  desires 
or  the  rights  of  anybody  else,  the  matter 
is  regarded  as  somehow  raised  above  the 
moral  law  by  its  dramatic  appeal.  Natu- 
rally we  must  guard  our  principle  of  in- 
tensity against  all  such  anti-social  senti- 
mentalism.  The  only  intensity  that  can 
prepare  us  for  a  spiritual  future  is  the 
intensity  of  the  best. 


XVIII 

AND  again,  if  we  are  to  gain  anything 
in  fitness  for  a  world  where  spirits  dwell 
at  once  together  and  apart,  we  must  live 
communicatively.  Our  intensity  must 
not  be  entirely  self-centered  and  con- 
cealed. We  must  share.  We  must  re- 
veal our  best.  We  must,  once  in  a  while, 
speak  out.  It  is  true,  as  we  found  reason 
earlier  in  this  discussion  to  believe,  that 
there  ought  to  be  some  things  we  feel 
and  do  not  tell.  That  natural  reticence 
which  prompts  us  to  say  least  when  the 
deepest  truth  is  most  deeply  appre- 
hended is  not  to  be  lightly  resisted.  It 
is  the  modesty  of  the  soul,  the  chastity 
of  the  inner  life.  The  best  people  we 
know  are  good  enough  not  to  talk  too 
124 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

much,  especially  about  goodness.  Per- 
haps it  is  not  altogether  a  misfortune 
that  the  present  generation  fears  cant 
more  than  it  fears  the  devil;  for  that 
brazen  counterfeit  known  as  cant  has 
always  been  the  devil's  most  effectual 
means  of  keeping  gold  coin  out  of  circu- 
lation. 

But  this  world  is  so  full  of  false  proph- 
ets and  deluding  dreams  that  when  you 
are  sure, you  had  better  tell  some  one  else 
who  is  sure — just  to  seethe  answering 
light  in  his  eye.  And  then  you  are  to 
risk  your  peace  of  mind  by  telling  some 
one  who  is  not  sure,  and  does  not  want 
to  be  sure.  There  will  be  no  light  in  his 
eye:  that  is  why  you  tell  him.  He,  poor 
soul,  does  not  know  he  needs  what  you 
have  to  give;  but  you  know  you  need  to 
give  it.  A  suppressed  truth  is  a  danger- 
125 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

cms  thing;  it  may  spoil  on  your  hands 
before  you  can  use  it;  or  it  may  explode 
when  too  much  compressed  by  your 
careful  secrecy;  or  it  may  altogether 
cease  to  be  a  truth  for  you  and  turn  out 
a  lie,  to  your  confusion  and  dismay. 

And  when  you  do  try  to  give  away 
a  real  truth,  whether  you  find  that  no- 
body wants  it,  or  that  the  crowd  is 
clamoring  for  it,  in  either  case  you  can- 
not after  all  really  give  it  away.  It  will 
not  leave  you.  You  give  it  and  keep  it 
too — like  happiness,  and  love,  and  all 
other  eternal  things. 

This  duty  to  live  communicatively, 
to  reveal  and  to  share  whatever  spark  of 
the  divine  fire  may  have  found  lodgment 
with  us,  is  usually  urged  on  the  ground 
of  the  shortness  of  life.  Richard  Watson 
Gilder,  for  example,  voices  it  thus:  — 
126 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

"  This  is  my  creed, 

This  be  my  deed  : 
'  Hide  not  thy  heart ' ; 

Soon  we  depart ; 

Mortals  are  all, 

A  breath,  then  the  pall, 

A  flash  in  the  dark, 

All's  done  —  stiff  and  stark ; 

No  time  for  a  lie ; 

The  truth,  and  then  die ; 

Hide  not  thy  heart. 

"  Forth  with  thy  thought ; 
Soon  't  will  be  naught, 
And  thou  in  thy  tomb ; 
Now  is  air,  now  is  room. 
Down  with  false  shame ; 
Reck  not  of  fame ; 
Dread  not  men's  spite ; 
Quench  not  thy  light. 
This  be  thy  creed, 
This  be  thy  deed  : 
«  Hide  not  thy  heart.' " 

Such  a  warning  as  that  derives  a  just 
solemnity  from  the  fact  that,  so  far  as 
127 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

this  world  is  concerned,  if  we  are  to 
speak  out  at  all,  it  must  be  soon.  But 
there  is  another  and  less  somber  aspect 
in  which  it  appears  desirable  for  us  to 
learn  by  practice  here  that  difficult  art 
of  spiritual  communication  upon  which 
we  shall  be  altogether  dependent  by 
and  by.  If  we  do  not  learn  it  here,  we 
may  learn  it  there;  but  perhaps  slowly 
and  with  infinite  difficulty.  Even  with 
lips  and  tongues  and  eyes  and  ears, 
even  with  the  ample  resources  of  hu- 
man speech  and  the  wonderful  arts  of 
writing  and  printing,  it  is  a  very  hard 
thing  to  transmit  a  spiritual  idea  from 
one  mind  to  another.  What  is  it  going 
to  be  when  we  live  in  a  world  where 
there  is  no  other  way  of  transmitting  a 
thought  than  to  think  it  intensely?  It 
is  said  of  the  stars,  — 
128 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

*'  Day  unto  day  uttereth  speech, 

And  night  unto  night  showeth  knowledge : 
There  is  no  speech  nor  language ; 
Their  voice  cannot  be  heard." 

The  stars  can  talk  without  words; 
they  do  it  just  by  shining.  Can  we? 
And  if  we  cannot  now,  would  it  not  be 
well  to  practice  a  little,  while  we  still 
have  the  words  ? l 

1  Moreover,  if  it  should  be  our  duty  or  our  privi- 
lege in  the  future  life  to  attempt  what  the  psychic 
researchers  think  many  spirits  are  trying  to  do,  that 
is,  to  send  thought  messages  from  the  other  side  into 
this  world  for  some  wise  and  good  purpose,  then  how 
enormously  important  it  might  be  that  we  should  be 
able  to  share  our  consciousness  with  others.  Such 
transmission  might  be  expected  to  require  a  very  high 
electric  potential,  so  to  speak,  to  overcome  the  vast 
resistance  through  which  it  must  operate.  Many  in- 
terested but  critical  investigators  of  trance  mediums 
and  automatic  writing  are  not  disposed  to  regard  as 
entirely  conclusive  against  the  genuineness  of  some 
of  these  phenomena  the  evident  trivialities  and  inco- 
herences mixed  in  with  the  more  reasonable  and  inter- 
esting material.  For,  they  remind  us,  we  must  not 
forget  the  stubborn  and  refractory  medium  through 
which  a  real  spirit  message,  if  there  be  any  such  thing, 
must  have  to  pass  in  using  any  human  mind,  even  one 

129 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Whether  we  do  or  do  not  take  the 
slightest  interest  in  the  possibility  of 
the  communication  of  thought  across 
the  borderland  between  the  two  worlds, 
we  shall  certainly  need  before  long  all 
our  powers  of  making  ourselves  under- 
stood by  others. 

so  sensitive  as  Mrs.  Piper's.  It  has  seemed  to  them 
that  an  effort  of  concentration  sufficient  to  stir  a  mor- 
tal brain  with  some  vague  fragments  of  a  genuine 
message  from  without  might  be  totally  inadequate  to 
avoid  a  large  admixture  of  nonsense  from  the  medi- 
um's own  subconscious  mind,  and  perhaps  also  from 
the  subconscious  or  conscious  minds  of  the  sitters; 
and  this  without  any  intentional  fraud  or  interference 
on  the  medium's  part.  In  fact,  they  point  out,  there 
is  a  certainv  presumption  that  the  earlier  manifesta- 
tions of  genuine  psychic  phenomena,  whether  to  too 
incredulous  or  too  credulous  investigators,  would  be 
fragmentary  and  obscure,  because  of  this  factor  of 
high  resistance  and  inadequate  initial  force.  The  an- 
alogies of  recent  scientific  progress  in  the  reinforce- 
ment of  very  weak  electrical  currents  in  long-distance 
telephony,  and  very  slight  ether  vibrations  in  wireless 
telegraphy  and  telephony,  show  us  that  this  difficulty 
is  serious  but  not  insurmountable  in  the  realm  of  nat- 
ural force.  Whether  it  can  ever  be  conquered  in  the 
sphere  of  mind  is  a  question  for  the  next  generation. 

130 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

It  may  be,  of  course,  that  communi- 
cation will  be  easier,  not  harder,  in  the 
future.  We  were  led  to  think,  in  con- 
sidering the  question  of  recognition  in 
the  future,  that  barriers  will  there  be 
lessened  rather  than  multiplied.  It  is 
obvious  that  the  polyglot  vocal  speech 
of  earth  will  be  superseded  there  by 
some  other  means  of  communicating 
thought,  which  may,  for  all  we  know, 
be  so  much  simpler  and  better  than 
ours  that  we  shall  wonder  why  we 
ever  bothered  with  the  alphabet.  But 
the  mere  communication  of  the  most 
elementary  ideas  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  the  sharing  of  spiritual  con- 
sciousness which  is  here  under  consid- 
eration. 

Every  time,  therefore,  that  we  suc- 
ceed in  overcoming  a  false  fear,  a  shal- 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

low  pride,  a  natural  reticence,  and  in 
giving  out  with  the  personal  stamp  that 
truth  which  we  have  made  our  own, 
we  are  preparing  for  a  wider  ministry 
here,  and  perhaps  hereafter.  The  sud- 
denly genuine  word  in  the  midst  of  the 
social  small  talk,  the  deliberate  writing 
of  the  neglected  letter  to  an  old  friend 
in  order  not  to  lose  the  line  of  com- 
munication, the  .'seeking  of  occasions 
when  one  may  appropriately,  though 
not  easily,  raise  serious  subjects  with 
the  casual  acquaintance,  or  even  with 
the  stranger  —  these  are  ways  of  keep- 
ing alive  the  spirit  of  giving  away  what 
we  have  no  right  to  keep. 

Yet  in  all  this  we  are  not  to  forget 

the  caution  of  one  who  was  all  his  life 

very  generous  with  the  things  which 

had  cost  him  the  most,  such  as  love  and 

132 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

truth.  The  great  Teacher  said  we  were 
not  to  waste  our  souls  on  useless  speech. 
His  words  were,  "  Cast  not  your  pearls 
before  swine." 


XIX 

To  live  for  the  future  is,  again,  to  live 
helpfully.  To  speak  of  it  sounds  trite, 
for  here  we  seem  to  be  merely  echoing 
the  familiar  though  lofty  teaching  of 
ordinary  religion  and  ethics.  But  in  the 
same  special  sense  as  that  in  which  we 
have  considered  the  future  life  as  a  life 
demanding  spiritual  intensity  and  spir- 
itual communication,  it  must  also  be  a 
life  of  spiritual  helpfulness.  Those  same 
considerations  of  intelligent  preparation 
for  a  new  state  of  being  which  make  it 
desirable  to  learn  to  be  intensely  our- 
selves, and  to  share  with  others  the 
best  of  our  inner  life,  also  demand  that 
we  turn  with  fresh  interest  and  zeal  to 
the  working  out  of  the  Golden  Rule  in 

134 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

the  practical  problems  of  daily  life.  Re- 
ligion teaches  us  that  we  should  help 
because  we  have  been  helped,  and  be- 
cause all  men  are  our  neighbors,  our 
brothers.  Ethics  teaches  us  that  we 
should  help  because  we  belong  to  a 
social  order  of  mutual  dependence.  The 
philosophy  of  immortality  teaches  us 
that  we  do  well  to  learn  now  how  to 
help,  and  to  find  pleasure  in  helping, 
because  that  is  probably  the  principal 
occupation  of  eternity. 

In  considering  the  possible  activities 
of  a  spiritual  world,  we  distinguished 
five:  (i)  helping  the  living;  (2)  dis- 
covering new  truth;  (3)  discovering  old 
friends;  (4)  discovering  new  friends; 
(5)  educating  the  new  comers  in  heaven. 
The  first  and  the  fifth  are  nothing  but 
helping.  The  discovery  of  truth  and  of 

'35 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

old  and  new  friends,  so  far  as  it  is  un- 
selfish and  not  merely  curious,  depends 
chiefly  upon  the  desire  to  be  of  use  as 
its  motive,  and  upon  sympathy,  intel- 
lectual and  moral,  as  its  method. 

Further,  the  other  two  kinds  of  prep- 
aration for  the  future  that  have  just 
been  discussed  will  not  amount  to  much 
unless  they  are  dominated  by  the  spirit 
of  helpfulness.  For  both  intensity  and 
the  ability  to  communicate  one's  thought 
are,  regarded  as  coldly  intellectual  pow- 
ers, within  the  reach  of  only  a  small 
minority  of  mankind,  and  perhaps  of 
comparatively  little  value  in  the  spirit- 
ual progress  of  the  race  in  this  world 
or  any  other.  To  live  intensely  by  sheer 
force  of  intellect  is  possible  to  one  man 
in  a  thousand;  to  live  intensely  by  sur- 
rendering oneself  unreservedly  to  the 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

great  tides  of  love  that  move  both  the 
heavens  and  the  hearts  of  men  is  pos- 
sible to  all. 

Again,  to  live  communicatively  by  such 
intellectual  concentration  as  achieves  an 
efficient  transmission  of  ideas  is  after  all 
not  for  the  multitude.  For  most  of  us, 
then,  intensity,  in  order  to  be  helpful, 
must  be  intensity  of  love,  not  of  intel- 
lect. And  the  life  of  spiritual  sharing, 
of  communication,  is  the  life  in  which 
we  learn  to  understand  others,  rather 
than  try  to  make  them  understand  us. 

Indeed,  the  highest  helpfulness  in  this 
world,  and  perhaps  in  the  next,  is  help- 
ing other  people  to  be  most  truly  them- 
selves; helping  them  to  express  their 
own  imperfect  thought,  and  so  to  grow; 
taking  for  granted  in  them  a  virtue 
which  they  have  by  no  means  shown, 

137 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

and  perhaps  do  not  possess,  but  which 
they  are  thereby  led  to  covet  and  to  ac- 
quire. "Our  chief  want  in  life  is  some- 
body who  shall  make  us  do  what  we 
can,"  says  Emerson.  The  strong  man 
does  that  for  himself,  both  making  the 
standard  and  holding  himself  up  to  it. 
The  rest  of  us  need  the  stern  stimulus  of 
necessity,  or  the  kind  incitements  of  a 
friend.  Such  helpfulness  as  that  requires 
both  intensity  and  communicativeness, 
and  sanctifies  them. 

Indeed,  this  third  principle  of  spirit- 
ual helpfulness  is  the  corrective  for  an 
otherwise  pernicious  and  egoistic  self- 
culture  like  that  of  the  Oriental  mystic, 
or  some  of  the  numerous  "  new  thought" 
cults  of  our  day.  We  are  not  primarily 
to  fit  ouselves  to  be  at  home  and  com- 
fortable in  the  spiritual  world  of  the 

138 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

future.  We  are  to  train  ourselves  by 
intensity  and  by  communicativeness  for 
a  life  of  eternal  ministry.  To  mention 
it  is  to  prove  it.  How  can  any  one  sup- 
pose that  the  need  for  mutual  helpful- 
ness will  cease  when  we  pass  into  a 
higher  sphere?  Would  it  be  a  higher 
sphere  if  that  need  had  disappeared? 
None  of  the  great  poets  has  thought 
so.  None  of  the  implications  of  person- 
ality points  in  that  direction.  And  if  you 
and  I  cannot  without  a  wrench  contem- 
plate so  simple  a  programme  as  that 
of  the  Boy  Scouts, —  "Do  a  good  turn 
every  day,"  —  how  shall  we  hope  to 
walk  without  shame  among  those  whose 
lives  are  nothing  more  than  wise  and 
happy  and  unhampered  ministry  to 
other  lives? 


XX 

IT  is  time  now  for  us  to  lay  aside  al- 
together the  flimsy  pretext  that  the  right 
kind  of  living  for  the  future  can  be  any 
other  than  the  right  kind  of  living  for 
the  present.  That  pretext  served  to  whet 
our  interest  in  a  bold  flight  of  fancy  at 
the  outset,  wherein  we  tried  to  reason 
out  what  may  be  and  probably  are  some 
of  the  occupations  of  eternity.  We  found 
them  to  be  not  unlike  the  higher  and 
more  admirable  occupations  of  this 
world.  Then  we  undertook,  still  with 
the  pretense  of  examining  an  unfamiliar 
subject,  to  see  what  kinds  of  preparation 
for  such  a  world  could  be  enumerated, 
outside  of  the  well-known  religious 
principles  of  turning  away  from  sin  and 
140 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

seeking  to  be  reconciled  with  one's 
Maker.  Having  discovered  several  such 
methods  of  learning  to  live  without  a 
body,  namely,  intensity,  communica- 
tiveness, and  helpfulness,  we  were  about 
to  end  the  elaborate  deductive  process 
with  a  Q.E.D. 

And  now  it  dawns  upon  us  that  these 
and  all  related  qualities  of  character  are 
just  as  important  to  our  usefulness  and 
happiness  in  this  world  as  in  the  next; 
that  every  day  we  practice  them,  we  are 
better  citizens  and  better  neighbors  and 
better  friends,  as  well  as  better  Chris- 
tians. There  remains  only  the  solemn 
farce  of  declaring  that  things  which  are 
equal  to  the  same  thing  are  equal  to 
each  other.  The  highest  duty  of  earth  is 
the  highest  duty  of  heaven.  Life  is  im- 
mortality, when  it  is  the  right  kind  of 
141 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

life.  "  Thy  will  be  done,  as  in  heaven,  so 
on  earth."  To  be  truly  good  is  to  abolish 
the  dead  line  between  the  next  twenty, 
forty,  fifty  years  of  life  and  what  follows 
—  to  live  for  the  whole  of  it,  expecting 
no  break.  And  all  our  study  of  "  living 
for  the  future  "  has  only  served  to  show 
us  that  there  is  no  other  kind  of  living 
worthy  of  the  name. 

Living  for  the  future  is  living  in  such 
a  way  that  we  help  to  make  the  future, 
and  the  future  helps  to  make  us.  It  is 
living  by  faith  in  ourselves,  as  the  heirs 
of  eternity;  in  our  fellow  men,  as  the 
companions  of  eternity;  in  God,  as  the 
Light  of  all  our  seeing,  the  Force  of  all 
our  better  striving,  and  the  Goal  of  all 
our  journey. 

It  is  well  to  remember  that  while 
reason  and  analogy  have  enabled  us  to 
142 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

see  with  a  certain  clearness  and  fresh- 
ness what  qualities  of  character  may 
perhaps  be  most  important  in  the  future, 
as  they  are  in  the  present,  reason  can 
never  give  us  those  qualities.  Only  life 
can  do  that.  And  the  more  abundant  life 
comes  when  to  the  vision  of  a  boundless 
eternity  is  joined  the  strenuous  and  sol- 
emn energy  that  comes  from  the  brevity 
of  earthly  endeavor.  Some  of  our  tasks 
and  some  of  our  privileges  must  be  begun 
here,  or  they  will  never  be  begun  at  all; 
some  of  the  opportunities  we  miss  now, 
we  miss  forever.  There  is  no  encour- 
agement for  the  idler,  the  shirker,  the 
drone.  For  them  it  may  well  be  true  that 
"The  night  cometh  when  no  man  can 
work." 

In  all  that  has  been  said  we  need  not 
be  surprised  to  find  just  what  we  have 
M3 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

been  hearing  all  our  lives  from  the  sa- 
cred words  of  Scripture.  Probably  the 
professional  religious  teacher  would  be 
eager  to  point  out  that  this  intensity  of 
the  inner  life,  this  willingness  to  share 
one's  deeper  thought,  this  desire  to  help 
one's  neighbor,  are  nothing  more  than 
other  names  for  prayer  and  worship  and 
Christian  charity.  So  it  is,  indeed.  We 
have  taken  a  bypath,  and  come  out  on 
the  main  road.  And  in  the  presence  of 
all  the  mysteries  and  the  unanswered 
questions  that  we  have  not  dared  to 
touch,  there  is  only  one  word  that  jus- 
tifies the  confidence  that  the  truth  is 
better  than  our  brightest  hopes.  That 
is  the  word  of  the  only  one  who  really 
knew  anything  about  it,  and  who,  be- 
cause he  knew,  would  not  tell.  He  re- 
assured his  disciples,  not  by  satisfying 
144 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

curiosity  about  the  future,  but  by  re- 
minding them  that  he  was  going  before 
them  into  the  unseen,  and  that  all  would 
be  well.  "  If  it  were  not  so,  I  would 
have  told  you." 


XXI 

IT  would  seem,  then,  both  from  the 
standpoint  of  unaided  reason  and  from 
that  of  revelation,  that  the  whole  duty  of 
man  toward  the  future  might  be  summed 
up  in  the  three  maxims,  live  intensely 
- — be  yourself;  live  communicatively  — 
give  yourself;  live  helpfully  —  forget 
yourself  in  order  to  remember  others. 
But  there  is  one  thing  more  that  is  in- 
volved in  living  for  the  future,  not  a 
duty  but  a  privilege.  What  is  future  for 
us  is  for  the  great  company  of  the  un- 
seen an  eternal  present.  To  them,  as 
they  walk  their  unseen  ways,  we  may 
lift  our  hearts  in  vague  but  reverent  sa- 
lute, that  is  something  more  than  mem- 
ory and  something  less  than  prayer. 
146 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Browning's  "Epilogue"  is  often  mis- 
quoted, or  rather  misinterpreted.  We 
hear  the  line,  "  Greet  the  unseen  with 
a  cheer,"  spoken  as  if  "the  unseen" 
meant  the  unseen  mystery,  the  unseen 
event,  the  unknown  morrow —  as  if  the 
adjective  were  to  be  construed  with 
a  neuter  noun  understood.  But  what 
Browning  said  was  that  we  should  greet 
with  a  cheer  the  unseen  friend,  who  in 
his  earthly  life 

4 'never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast 

forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed,   though   right  were   worsted, 

wrong  would  triumph 

Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake." 

It  is  to  him,  to  the  poet,  the  prophet,  the 

hero,  to  that  father,  brother,  lover,  friend 

of  each  one  of  us,  who  is  now  unseen  but 

H7 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

living  somewhere  still,  that  we  should 
raise  a  cheer.  Whether  -he  hears  that 
cheer  or  not,  it  ennobles  our  own  unfin- 
ished struggle  with  a  glimpse  of  the  goal. 
We  have  a  Memorial  Day  for  the  de- 
parted soldiers  of  our  wars.  It  is  a  good 
day,  and  should  cease  to  be  a  holiday  in 
order  that  it  may  become  a  holy  day; 
the  last  Sunday  in  May  should  be  cele- 
brated forever,  with  an  increasing  per- 
ception of  its  deeper  meaning  as  the  last 
of  those  who  began  the  observance  pass 
into  the  unknown.  But  we  need  such  a 
day  for  others  than  the  veterans.  We 
need  a  day  —  perhaps  early  in  Novem- 
ber, at  about  the  time  when  a  part  of 
the  Christian  Church  celebrates  All 
Souls'  Day  —  upon  which  all  those  who 
are  so  disposed  may  do  honor  to  the 
Great  Majority.  In  every  school  and 
148 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

college  and  university  there  might  then 
be  recalled  the  memory  of  those  illus- 
trious alumni  whose  names  now  bear 
the  star.  We  need  a  Decoration  Day 
when  there  shall  be  garlands  for  the 
heroes  of  peace,  wreaths  for  genius, 
flowers  for  every  unseen  friend.  This 
generation  needs  a  day  once  in  the  year 
when  boys  and  girls,  and  young  men 
and  young  women,  shall  be  called  upon 
in  their  several  places  of  assembly  to 
stand  up,  and  look  up,  and  raise  the 
right  hand  in  salute  to  the  departed.  At 
the  dinner  table  on  that  day  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family,  the  club,  might  well 
stand  and  drink  in  silence  a  cup  for 
auld  lang  syne.  The  Eucharist  in  the 
churches  on  such  a  day  would  take 
on  a  new  meaning;  it  would  stand  for 
the  communion  of  all  souls. 
149 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

But  no  such  day,  no  thought  that 
might  lie  ba.ck  of  it,  could  ever  help  us 
much  unless  we  thought  of  it  as  the  day 
not  of  the  dead  but  of  the  ever-living. 
There  has  been  too  much  living  for  the 
past,  both  in  church  and  state.  We  have 
seen  dead  customs  and  dead  creeds  gov- 
erning the  present  and  fettering  and 
thwarting  its  life.  The  memory  even  of 
the  just  is  not  blessed  unless  it  is  linked 
with  hope.  In  all  such  reverence  as  we 
pay  to  the  lives  that  seem  to  have  ended, 
we  do  well;  but  in  such  reverence  as 
we  pay  by  our  own  better  living  to  those 
invisible  lives  that  have  really  just  be- 
gun, we  do  far  better  than  we  know, 
better  both  for  them  and  for  ourselves. 
By  living  so  as  to  do  them  honor,  by 
carrying  on  their  unfinished  tasks,  and 
by  sending  up  to  them  now  and  then  the 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

swift,  keen,  grateful  thought  of  recog- 
nition and  companionship,  we  are,  once 
more,  living  for  the  future  in  such  fash- 
ion as  to  make  our  present  wiser  and 
better  and  more  enduring. 


XXII 

WE  have  come  a  long  way.  We  have, 
like  Lear,  sought  to  "  take  upon  us  the 
mystery  of  things,  as  if  we  were  God's 
spies."  We  have  followed  the  daring 
example  of  Omar  Khayyam,  and  arrived 
at  his  somewhat  trite  conclusion:  — 

11 1  sent  my  soul  through  the  invisible, 
Some  letter  of  that  after-life  to  spell : 
And  by  and  by  my  soul  returned  to  me, 
And   answered,   '  I  myself   am  Heaven  and 
Hell.'  " 

And  like    Omar  we    must  all    say  at 
last,  — 

"  There  was  the  door  to  which  I  found  no  key ; 
There  was  the  veil  through  which  I  might  not 
see." 

Much  of  the  fabric  of  our  vision  is  in- 
152 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

deed  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  on; 
and  perhaps  none  the  worse  for  that. 
We  have  begun  with  the  hypothesis  of 
personal  immortality,  which  is  itself  in 
this  age  a  dream  to  many  noble  and 
reverent  minds.  And  upon  that  we  have 
built  our  airy  towers  and  pinnacles  of 
inference  and  speculation,  all  in  a  vain 
effort  to  guess  what  man  was  never  made 
to  know.  It  is,  when  so  considered, from 
the  angle  of  mere  reason  and  demon- 
stration, indeed  a  dream.  Perhaps  life 
itself  is  a  dream,  from  which  some  never 
wake.  But  a  good  deal  depends  on  what 
sort  of  dream  we  have,  both  of  this  frail 
mortality  that  we  know  so  well,  and  of 
that  unimaginable  morning  "when  we 
dead  awake,''  if  the  dream  comes  true. 
That  strange  and  brilliant  but  unfortu- 
nate English  poet,  Thomas  Lovell  Bed- 

153 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

does,  asks  us  all  a  searching  question 
when  he  inquires, — 

*'  If  there  were  dreams  for  sale, 
What  would  you  buy  ?  " 

But  dreams  are  not  for  sale. 


XXIII 

As  the  years  go,  life  in  an  age  like 
this  becomes  more  and  more  largely 
either  an  admiration  or  a  despair.  By 
such  an  admiration  as  comes  from  the 
contemplation  of  the  immortals,  we  may 
escape  the  dullness,  the  pettiness,  the 
weariness,  that  the  passing  of  youth  so 
easily  leaves  behind.  See  how  they 
march  in  victory ;  behold  how  they  rest 
in  peace.  Remember  their  long  striving^ 
and  consider  their  perfect  calm.  Ponder 
the  deep  secret  of  their  coming  hither, 
and  of  their  going  hence.  But  demand 
not  that  they  return. 

For  perhaps  we  are  not  to  look  for 
any  experimental  confirmation  of  our 
hope  of  immortality,  save  such  confir- 

155 


LIVING  FOR  THE   FUTURE 

mation  as  comes  from  living  in  that  hope. 
Commune  with  the  earth,  whence  man 
arises,  and  whither  he  seems  to  return. 
Salute  the  sky,  where  light  resides,  and 
where  all  vapors  pass  away.  Ask  of 
them  both,  of  the  earth  his  mother  and 
of  the  sky  his  father,  what  they  have  done 
with  him  now;  and  they  will  answer 
only  with  the  harvest,  and  with  the  dawn. 
He  is,  they  intimate,  neither  a  flower 
nor  a  star,  that  they  should  bring  him 
back  in  his  season.  He  came;  he  is 
gone;  he  comes  no  more,  is  not  to  be 
repeated.  The  scattered  fragments  of 
Osiris  are  not  to  be  recovered  beneath 
the  sun ;  if  he  shines  again,  it  will  not  be 
here.  The  faithful  Isis  buried  all  of  him 
that  she  could  find,  but  one  thing  escaped 
her  and  so  could  not  be  buried,  and  that 
—  was  Osiris.  "What  is  man,  that  thou 

156 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

art  mindful  of  him?"  That  which  we 
know  most  surely  about  him  is,  that  he 
departs. 

But  out  of  his  buildings  looks  a  soul; 
under  his  music  sings  a  deep  desire; 
between  the  dusty  pages  of  his  forgot- 
ten books  there  is  a  breath  of  spring. 
By  men  he  is  soon  forgotten;  by  the 
earth  at  last  disowned,  because  even  as 
dust  he  ceases  to  be  fertile;  by  the  sky 
rejected,  because  he  is  too  much  lighter 
than  the  air.  It  is  as  though  he  were 
not;  yet  we  know  that  he  has  a  home, 
and  that  it  is  we  that  wander. 

4 '  Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea-change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange." 

Consider  then  this  myster}':  that  nei- 
ther in  the  earth  nor  in  the  sky  can  you 
find  that  brave  Spirit  of  the  man,  which 
157 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

he  truly  was,  and  is,  and  shall  be  when 
all  flesh  has  passed  away.  And  having 
found  him  not,  revere  him;  because,  like 
Eternity,  of  which  he  is  a  part,  he  must 
for  what  remains  of  Time  elude  you 
and  lead  you  onward,  in  a  quest  that  is 
its  own  reward.  "  Greet  the  unseen  with 
a  cheer."  For  to  greet  the  unseen,  to 
recognize  the  reality  of  spirit  and  the 
supremacy  of  love,  is  immortality. 


A  SONG  FOR  ALL  SOULS 

I 
SING  for  the  brave  whom  men  revere, 

The  brave  whom  no  man  knows, 
Who  face  the  dark  and  conquer  fear, 
Confronting  unknown  foes; 
Sing  for  the  brave. 

Sing  for  the  loyal  and  the  true, 

The  silent  souls  obscure, 
Who  waver  not  the  long  years  through, 

The  steadfast  and  the  sure: 
Sing  for  the  true. 

Sing  for  the  gentle  and  the  kind, 

The  merciful,  the  tender, 
Who  guide  the  erring,  light  the  blind, 
And  all  for  love  surrender: 
Sing  for  the  kind. 
159 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

ii 
Sing  for  the  dead  who  died  for  love, 

Whose  life  was  but  a  song, 
Red  is  the  rose  their  graves  above, 
Green  is  the  grass  and  long: 
Sing  for  the  dead. 

Sing  for  the  dead  who  died  forlorn, 
The  dead  who  died  in  glory. 

Tell  for  the  children  yet  unborn 
Their  old,  forgotten  story: 
Sing  for  the  dead. 

Sing  for  the  dead  who  died  to  save 

Freedom  and  fatherland. 
They  knew  not  why  they  had  to  die, 

But  now  they  understand: 
Sing  for  the  dead. 

1 60 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Sing  for  the  dead;  they  cannot  sing 
What  our  gross  ears  can  hear. 

Echo  the  songs  they  fain  would  bring. 
Sing,  for  the  dead  are  near — so  near: 
Sing  for  the  dead. 

in 

Sing  for  the  dead,  the  unfulfilled, 
The  child,  the  youth,  the  bride; 
The  poet's  voice  too  early  stilled; 
Dreams  unfinished,  and  hopes  denied; 
Beauty  and  pride  the  grave  doth  hide  : 
Sing  for  the  unfulfilled. 

Sing  for  the  dead  that  tried  and  failed, 

Or  never  tried  at  all ; 
Who  lived  in  vain  through  peril    and 

pain, 

Fell,  and  never  got  up  again, 
And  suddenly  heard  the  last  great  call: 
Sing  for  them  all. 
161 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Sing  for  the  day  that  is  over  at  last, 

Sing  for  the  resting  bed; 
Sing  for  release,  sing  for  peace, 
Sing  for  rest  that  is  last  and  best, 
Sing  for  sleep  that  is  long  and  deep; 
Sing  for  the  silent  dead. 

IV 

Sing  soft  and  low; 

Do  they  hear?  Do  they  know? 

We  come  and  we  go, 

But  they  stay. 
Life  laughs  and  weeps; 

Death  sleeps. 
Life  loves  and  hates; 

Death  waits. 
Life  sings  and  sighs; 

Death  's  wise. 

No  surprise, 

162 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

No  fear  comes  here, 
No  war  any  more, 
No  day,  no  night. 
All 's  well,  all 's  right, 
All 's  finished  at  last; 
Debts  paid,  danger  past. 
Sun  's  in  the  west; 
Let  them  rest 

With  the  sun; 

Day  's  done. 

v 

Sing  for  the  lost  whom  God  has  found 

Beneath  the  land  and  sea. 
The  souls  astray  have  found  their  way 
Back  to  the  light  of  the  endless  day, 

Back  to  eternity. 

He  called  the  armies  under  ground; 
From    sunken    ships    he    called    the 
drowned; 

163 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Lost  souls  rose  when  they  heard  that 

sound. 
Sing  for  the  lost  and  found. 

Sing  for  the  living  that  cannot  die, 
Because  they  know  the  way 

To  cross  the  sea  and  pierce  the  sky; 

For  brains  wear  out,  but  souls  can  fly 
Through  night  to  find  the  day. 

Sing  for  the  lives  that  rise  and  soar, 

Sing  for  the  souls  that  die  no  more, 

Sing  for  the  everlasting  shore 

Beyond  the  restless  sea.    , 


Sing  for  the  free,  wherever  they  be, 

In  this  world  or  a  better, 
Whose  spirits  bold  no  chain  can  hold, 
No  past  enthrall,  no  fate  enfold, 

Whose  life  no  death  can  fetter; 
164 


LIVING   FOR  THE  FUTURE 

Whose  souls  arise  before  our  eyes 
From  prison  cells  to  Paradise: 
Sing  for  the  free, 
Wherever  they  be. 
Sing  for  all  souls! 
Sing! 


PRAYERS  FOR  THE  ETERNAL  LIFE 

I 

O  THOU  who  hast  set  eternity  in  the 
heart  of  man,  and  hast  made  us  all  seek- 
ers after  that  which  we  can  never  find, 
forbid  us  to  be  satisfied  with  life.  Draw 
us  away  from  base  content,  and  set  our 
eyes  on  far-off  things.  Keep  us  at  tasks 
too  hard  for  us,  that  we  may  be  driven  to 
Thee  for  strength.  Deliver  us  from  fret- 
fulness  and  self-pity.  Make  us  sure  of 
the  goal  we  cannot  see,  and  of  the  hid- 
den good  in  the  world.  Open  our  eyes 
to  beauty  by  the  way,  and  our  hearts  to 
the  loveliness  men  hide  from  us  be- 
cause we  do  not  trust  them  enough. 
Bind  us  by  fast  bonds  to  the  brother- 
166 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

hood  of  those  who  love  Thee  better 
than  they  know,  who  serve  Thee  in  the 
darkness,  and  even  in  their  doubts  will 
never  give  Thee  up.  Shine  Thou  upon  us 
with  such  light  as  we  can  bear.  Show  us 
such  truth  as  we  can  understand  and 
obey.  Save  us  from  ourselves,  and  fill  our 
hearts  with  the  vision  of  a  world  made 
new.  Help  us  to  desire  no  reward  but 
the  utter  freeing  of  our  souls  from  the 
bonds  of  flesh  when  the  days  of  our  years 
on  the  earth  are  fulfilled. 

ii 

O  Everlasting  Father,  steady  us  in 
the  midst  of  a  changing  world.  We  have 
lost  our  fatherland,  and  have  not  found 
the  land  beyond  the  sea.  Our  hearts  are 
restless  and  athirst  for  the  living  God, 
who  made  us  what  we  are.  But  Thou, 
167 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

O  Lord,  art  steadfast   and   unshaken. 
We  know  that  Thou  art  the  Master  of 
all  things  visible  and  invisible,  and  that 
there  is  none  among  all  the  powers  of 
evil  that  can  withstand  Thee.  Quiet  our 
nameless  fears,  drive  out  the  dread  of 
death,  and  of  a  dreary,  helpless  life  after 
death.   Grant  to  us  a  hope  of  immortal- 
ity that   shall   not  vanish   in   shadows 
when  our  sun  is  setting.  Show  us  an  in- 
visible world  far  better  than  men  have 
dreamed  of  or  desired,  and  a  light  too 
bright  for  mortal  eyes.  We  ask  not  for 
a  heaven  wherein  to  be  made  happ3',but 
only  to  have  more  time  to  do  the  tasks 
we  have  failed  in  here,  and  to  learn  how 
to  be  free.   Deliver  us  from  haste  and 
dismay,  and    set    our  daily  life  before 
us  in  the  quiet  light  of  eternity. 

1 68 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

ni 

O  Thou  who  art  the  shepherd  of  all 
wandering  souls,  we  who  have  loved 
too  few,  and  none  aright,  beseech  Thee 
to  teach  us  compassion.  Show  us  the 
hungry  hearts  of  men  and  women, 
turned  bitter  with  long  waiting,  that 
with  understanding  we  may  love  those 
who  love  us  not.  Blot  out  of  our  re- 
membrance all  harsh  words,  and  make 
us  ever  mindful  of  the  hidden  pain  that 
others  must  endure.  To  all  weakness 
that  men  bear  as  a  burden  from  the 
past  make  us  very  merciful.  To  all  de- 
fect of  love  in  those  who  have  never 
been  loved  make  us  forgiving,  when 
we  remember  how  richly  we  have  been 
forgiven.  Show  us  the  hidden  tragedies 
and  thejiidden  heroisms  of  those  whom 
169 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

we  have  thought  to  be  our  enemies. 
Help  us  to  look  upon  the  thwarted 
souls  of  men  in  the  days  of  their  life  as 
we  shall  look  upon  their  still  faces  in 
the  day  of  their  death,  in  order  that 
now,  rather  than  then,  understanding 
all  we  may  forgive  all. 

IV 

We  thank  Thee,  O  God,  for  light 
after  darkness,  and  for  the  endless  re- 
newing of  life.  Thou  that  art  never 
weary  of  setting  us  free  from  the  bonds 
wherewith  we  have  bound  ourselves, 
make  us  to  walk  abroad  in  this  new 
day  without  fear,  or  any  kind  of  bond- 
age. Teach  us  to  enter  humbly  into 
the  heritage  of  truth  won  for  us  by 
saints  and  martyrs  of  old,  that  their 
sacrifice  may  not  have  been  in  vain, 
170 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

but  that  they,  being  perfected  in  us, 
may  be  glad  after  all  their  griefs.  Open 
our  eyes  to  perceive  new  light,  and  our 
ears  to  hear  the  new  voices  of  the  age 
that  is  calling  us.  Show  us  how  to  help 
men  and  women  to  be  more  truly  them- 
selves. Fit  us  for  the  life  that  is  await- 
ing us  in  the  new  kingdom  of  heaven 
upon  earth  that  is  near  at  hand.  And 
may  we  gladly  give  up  all  things  for 
that. 

v 

O  Thou  who  art  the  Father  of  all  the 
faithful,  give  us  the  great  gift  of  faith. 
Help  us  always  to  believe  in  the  best 
that  we  know,  and  the  best  that  our 
hearts  have  hoped  for.  And  may  we 
never  be  utterly  cast  down  when  we 
look  upon  the  ruins  of  our  happiness, 
171 


LIVING  FOR  THE  FUTURE 

'jr  the  failure  of  all  our  strivings  after 
goodness.  Bid  us  then  arise  in  patience 
and  good  cheer  to  take  up  the  broken 
task  once  more,  to  rebuild  the  eternal 
mansion-house  of  God  in  the  midst  of 
our  vanishing  days.  And  so  teach  us 
that  by  our  daily  failures  we  may  learn 
how  to  outlast  Time,  to  rescue  from 
decay  and  oblivion  all  that  is  best  and 
loveliest  and  most  fleeting,  and  to  be- 
come true  citizens  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  that  passeth  not  away. 


THE    END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

T,os  Angeles 


A     000  602  358     4 


Syrian 


By 

Abraham  Mitrie  Rihbany 
* 

An  illuminating  interpreta- 
tion of  the  life  and  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  Christ  by  a 
Syrian  who  has  become 
one  of  America's  most  fa- 
mous preachers  ***** 

* 

FOR  SALE  AT 
ALL  BOOKSTORES  OR  BY  THE  PUBLISHERS 

Houghton  Mifflin  Company 

4  Park  St.,  Boston    :    16  E.  40th  St.,  New  York 


UNIVERSITY  OF   CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
Txw  Angeles 

It       *' 


is  unusual  significance 
in  this  study  and  interpreta- 
tion  of  Jesus  Christ  by  a  Syr- 
ian. As  a  prophet  and  a  seer,  to  be 
sure,  Jesus  belongs  to  all  races  and 
all  ages.  Yet  as  regards  his  modes  of 
thought  and  life,  and  his  methods  of 
teaching,  he  was  distinctly  a  Syrian. 
It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  the 
truths  of  his  Gospel  should  be  handed 
down  to  succeeding  generations,  and 
later  should  come  to  us  of  the  Occi- 
dent, in  Oriental  moulds  of  thought. 

Conditions  of  life  in  that  country 
have  changed  but  little  since  the  days 
of  Jesus,  and  Mr.  Rihbany's  own  ex- 
perience and  knowledge  qualify  him 
to  throw  fresh  light  on  the  life  and 
teachings  of  Christ  and  on  other  por- 
tions of  the  Bible  whose  correct  under- 
standing depends  to  a  large  extent  on 
accurate  knowledge  of  the  original 
environment. 

Not  the  least  of  the  good  qualities 
of  this  book  is  its  charming  style  and 
its  freedom  from  technicalities  and 
doctrinal  appeals.  Bathed  in  an  Ori- 
ental atmosphere,  the  story  as  told  by 
Mr.  Rihbany  reads  almost  like  a  ro- 
mance. "The  Birth  of  a  Man  Child," 


THE  LIBRARY 


A    nno 


II 


Jbo 


"The  Star  of  Bethlehem,"  "Filial Obe- 
dience," "Feast  and  Sacrament  "(the 
Last  Supper),  "The  Oriental  Manner 
of  Speech,"  "Bread  and  Salt,"  "Sis- 
ters of  Mary  and  Martha,"  and  other 
chapters,  are  charming  stories  told  in 
a  simple,  direct  manner  which  is  at 
once  pleasing  and  reverential. 

As  a  whole  the  book  is  not  only  of 
vital  importance  to  the  preacher  and 
the  Bible  teacher,  but  it  is  also  a  vol- 
ume for  home  reading  as  well.  Its 
varied  scenes  of  Syrian  life  appeal 
alike  to  the  scholar,  the  layman,  and 
the  child,  and  reproduce  for  Western 
readers  the  original  atmosphere  in 
which  the  Bible  was  first  written.  As 
an  eminent  preacher  wrote  to  the  au- 
thor, this  work  is  "a  real  key  to  the 
Scriptures." 

Mr.  Rihbany  is  the  minister  of  the 
Church  of  the  Disciples  in  Boston, 
with  which  James  Freeman  Clarke 
was  so  long  identified.  In  1914  he 
published  "A  Far  Journey."  an  ac- 
count of  his  early  life  in  Syria  and  his 
extraordinarily  interesting  career  in 
this  country,  to  which  he  came  as  a 
penniless  immigrant. 
$1.50  net. 


UNIVER! 


A  FAR  JOURNEY 

BY 

ABRAHAM  MITRIE 
RIHBANY 

"  It  is  a  marvelous  recital,  this 
bridging  of  the  thousands  of  years 
that  separate  Turkey  and  the  United 
States,  and  one  that  every  true  Amer- 
ican can  read  with  almost  as  great  a 
pride  as  the  teller  of  the  story  must 
feel."—  The  Dial. 

"A  book  to  be  grouped  with  those 
of  Jacob  A.  Riis,  Dr.  Steiner,  and 
Mary  Antin."  —  The  Continent. 

"  Written  in  a  simple,  fine  English 
style,  there  is  something  of  the  Ori- 
ental flavor  about  it.  It  gives  an 
insight  not  only  into  the  soul  of  the 
immigrant,  but  also  the  life  of  his 
people  in  Syria."  —  St.  Louis  Post- 
Dispatch. 

Illustrated.   $1.75  net 


BT 
921 
S63  1 


